10 Questions for Paul Farmer

Harvard professor and global-health activist Paul Farmer on helping Haiti, rethinking aid--and bathroom signs

Lee Towndrow for TIME

Harvard professor and global-health activist, Paul Farmer.

Your new book To Repair the World includes some of your commencement speeches. Are you ever tempted to tell graduates, "I could have saved thousands of lives with the money you spent on your degree?"
I don't think of it that way. I think, Here's a chance to reach out to people who probably are unaware — as I was at their age — of their privilege and to engage them in the work.

You say the very poorest don't get health care because of a failure of imagination. Is that really what it is?
It must be, because a lot...

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