This summer, he will return to Berlin and a two-year Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellowship for research on the relationship between religious values and ethics and actual social behavior in Tibetan societies, focusing on hunting. The text that follows is drawn from an hour-long interview with Steven Weinberger on February 20, 1997.
Questions are in italic type.
I was a student at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand in the late 70s studying botanical science, and I joined some Australian Government botanical expeditions to the western highlands of Papua New Guinea and tropical Australia. In New Guinea especially, and on aboriginal reserves in Australia as well, I really became interested in other cultures, anthropology, other religions, things like that. After I graduated, I worked as a field botanist for four years with New Zealand's Forest Service, mainly in the Southern Alps of New Zealand. This work became intellectually dissatisfying. I was interested in mountain climbing, and for holidays had always gone to the Himalaya to climb and hike, and I met a lot of Tibetan refugees.