Perkins is an emeritus professor at The Evergreen State College, where he supervised the Graduate Program on the Environment and taught Environmental and Energy Studies. He is a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Senior Fellow at the National Council for Science and the Environment. He's also the author of Insects, Experts, and the Insecticide Crisis: The Search for Novel Pest Management Techniques and Geopolitics and the Green Revolution: Wheat, Genes, and the Cold War.