Michael Specter joined the Bard faculty in 2012 as visiting professor of environmental and urban studies. Specter has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 1998, where he writes about science, technology, and global public health. In 2011, he was awarded the World Health Organization's Stop TB Partnership Award for Excellence in Reporting. In 2009, he won the Robert P. Balles Annual Prize in Critical Thinking for his book Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives.