John Knox ’68

Antioch College Class of 1968 Preferred pronouns: he/him
BA Psychology

Bio- Tell us about yourself.

At Antioch I was a psychology major, and I was very involved with aspects of Community Government and educational innovation. I became a conscientious objector in my 1968 graduation year and postponed (permanently, as it turned out) my graduate study in clinical psychology at University of Michigan, in favor of completing my alternative service in San Francisco. Through that CO workplace, I met a woman with whom I would partner for 15 years, and we renovated an SF Victorian, took bicycle trips, and helped set up hostels on the California coast. As an extension of my interest in alternative energy, I started volunteering with David Brower’s Friends of the Earth in 1983, and later helped him set up Earth Island Institute, where I worked as an Executive Director for more than 30 years. I now work half time at EII in an emeritus role, also serving on the board of the David Brower Center in Berkeley, where EII has its offices. I am happily partnered with my wife Carole Roberts, and we enjoy city life and environmental projects, including a garden and zero waste aspirations.

How did Antioch College’s Co-op program prepare you for work life?

I had various coops that gave me a good look at the world of professional psychology, but my final coop, working for a management consultant (and Antioch alum — Larry Kramer ’50) in SF specializing in philanthropic management opened both doors and intellectual horizons that would lead me eventually to work in nonprofit environmental advocacy.

How did your Antioch College experience prepare you for life?

I was a restless teenager in small town Northeast Ohio when I first went to college at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, then a Presbyterian men’s school with compulsory chapel and ROTC. I did very well there but became convinced that so much was limited and conventional about the education that I was getting that I should search for a transfer school. A friend of my father knew Wally Sikes at Antioch, and I went for a visit on my freshman winter break. My conversation with Wally led to a lifelong love affair with the liberating influence of the creatively disruptive education that was Antioch College. I am very involved with the rebuilding of the Antioch that did so much for me.

What does our charge to “win a victory for humanity” mean to you?

My reaction to Lafayette and my embrace of the remarkable Antioch community probably set me on the path to see the problems in our world that needed addressing. I originally thought that I would bring a psychological perspective to educational reform, but my later experience in the Bay Area in my 20s led me to the urgent agenda of responding to environmental threats that were being identified by the nascent environmental movement.