Recent changes to US research funding are having far-reaching consequences that imperil the integrity of science and the provision of care to vulnerable populations. Resisting these changes, the BJPsych Portfolio reaffirms its commitment to publishing mental science and advancing psychiatric knowledge that improves the mental health of one and all.

This editorial considers the value and nature of academic psychiatry by asking what defines the specialty and psychiatrists as academics. We frame academic psychiatry as a way of thinking that benefits clinical services and discuss how to inspire the next generation of academics.

Environmental Citizenship. Andrew Dobson and Derek Bell, eds. 2006. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. 296 pp. $125.00 hardcover; $24.00 paperback.

Citizenship and the Environment. Andrew Dobson. 2003. Oxford University Press, New York. 227 pp. $119.95 hardcover; $39.95 paperback.

Western political culture has proven itself to be remarkably durable. Despite the vicissitudes of the last twenty-five hundred years, many of its core beliefs and philosophical assumptions are still intact and continue to exert considerable influence on our contemporary political discourse. Perhaps the most venerable political construct to have survived from classical antiquity is the concept of citizenship. The ancient Greeks believed that the good life could only be achieved by the direct and active participation of the individual in the public sphere. That the Greeks explicitly privileged the public space of politics over the private space of the home is made clear by their use of the term “idiot” to characterize people who did not participate in the affairs of the political community or polis.

The Green State: Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty. Robyn Eckersley. 2004. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. 347 pp. $25 paperback.

Green political theorists often express deeply antagonistic attitudes toward the modern nation-state. The nation-state is denounced by many such thinkers for contributing to ecological destruction through the encouragement of unsustainable economic growth and the facilitation of natural resource extraction, among other practices. Another frequent criticism is that the finite territorial sovereignty of nation-states renders them inadequate to deal with environmental problems that are inherently transnational in scope. While recognizing the legitimacy of such critiques, Robyn Eckersley comes to the defense of the beleaguered nation-state in her provocative new work, The Green State: Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty. Throughout its pages, Eckersley argues that because the nation-state is still the primary locus of social and political power in the world, the most realistic and effective strategy for addressing environmental problems is to work toward transforming individual states into greener institutions, rather than seeking elusive supranational solutions.

David W. Orr. 2004. Island Press, Washington, DC. 192 pp. $20 hardcover.

Readers of David Orr's previous work will be delighted, though I suspect not surprised, to learn that he has written yet another landmark book. The Last Refuge: Patriotism, Politics, and the Environment in an Age of Terror is a timely collection of 13 essays, most of which appeared originally in the journal Conservation Biology. The essays contained in The Last Refuge are diverse, ranging from an examination of the environmental movement's shortcomings to a scathing critique of Bjørn Lomborg's controversial book, The Skeptical Environmentalist. If the essays are viewed as a whole, however, they constitute a coherent jeremiad against the prevailing political, economic, and cultural values of modern America.