Garrett Hardin
American ecologist (1915-2003) best known for the 1968 Science essay 'The Tragedy of the Commons.' A long-time professor at UC Santa Barbara, Hardin's later work on population and immigration took explicitly nativist and eugenicist positions that remain controversial.
Garrett Hardin (1915-2003) was an American ecologist and human-ecology theorist, most associated with the 1968 essay Tragedy of the Commons published in *Science*. He spent most of his academic career at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he taught human ecology from the 1940s into the 1970s. Hardin's intellectual project tied together ecology, ethics, and population policy. Beyond the commons essay he wrote on 'lifeboat ethics' — arguing that rich nations should refuse aid to poorer ones to avoid ecological collapse — and was active in groups advocating immigration restriction. The Southern Poverty Law Center and other watchdog organizations have documented his ties to white nationalism and his explicit endorsement of eugenics-influenced views on population. These positions are often noted when his commons argument is discussed, though scholars disagree on how much weight they should carry in evaluating the technical content of the 1968 paper. Hardin died in 2003. His commons essay remains one of the most-cited articles in the social sciences, and his framing continues to shape policy debates even as empirical work by Elinor Ostrom and others has substantially complicated its conclusions.