HARVEY KEYES FLAD
2003 HONOREE
Environmentalist
Harvey Keyes Flad is a geographer by profession, but by persuasion he is a renaissance man—a scholar whose passions range from art to science. He is a professor at Vassar College, and as such, has become an important contributor to the Hudson River Valley's environmental and conservation movements. Most significantly, it was his groundbreaking work that in 1980 defeated the proposed Green County Nuclear Power Plant in the Olana Watershed; Flad's compelling testimony revolved around the aesthetic impact of the plant. This was the first time that an industrial development in an area of scenic national heritage was halted on account of "visual impact" and created a critical legal precedent for environmentalists. A long-time colleague-in-arms with Frances S. Reese, the 2002 Russel Wright Award winner for Environmentalism, Professor Flad was personally nominated for this honor by the late founder of Scenic Hudson. Prior to Franny's passing this summer, it had been planned that she would present this award today.
Harvey Flad has been a member of the Vassar College faculty since 1972, where he has chaired the Department of Geology and Geography for a decade and was director of the college's American Culture program. Flad has been a Fulbright Scholar in Kyrgyzstan and a Peace Corps volunteer in Nigeria. He also held a Ford Foundation Fellowship while completing his doctoral dissertation (for Syracuse University) on urban American Indians. He has been a consultant to government agencies and regional museums, and he has written a number of environmental impact plans for river shorelands in the Hudson River bioregion.
"For geographers, the ideas of space and place are central concepts," he said as the Vassar Spring Convocation speaker last year. "Some view spatial patterns and processes in abstract, quantifiable, rationalist terms. In contrast, some cultural geographers consider the human-environment relationship as a love of landscape or place. I happily count myself among this band of 'topophiliacs.' We take an emotional, subjective view of our relationship to the earth, especially special places on the surface of the earth."
His scholarly work includes writings and lectures on geography, the landscape, place, identity, architecture, and art including a recent essay entitled, "The Hudson River Valley and the Geographical Imagination," in the book From the Hudson to the Hamptons: Snapshots of the New York Metropolitan Area. Much of Flad's recent work has been devoted to the development of landscape design in America and its relationship to changing cultural evaluation of nature and society, especially in the mid-19th Century Hudson River Valley. He has particularly focused on Andrew Jackson Downing and his role in the creation of an American landscape ideal, presenting conference papers with titles such as: "The Parlor in the Landscape: 19th Century Mountain House Resorts and the Shaping of Nature"; "Roots of the Olmsted Vision: Downing, Vaux and Landscape Design"; and "Beauty and the Brewer: Matthew Vassar's Landscapes and A.J. Downing" (presented in October 1998).
Beth Dunlop