Peter Baldwin (born December 22, 1956) is a research professor of history at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...

, Global Distinguished Professor at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

, and a philanthropist.

Academic career

He was educated at

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...

(MA and PhD, both in History 1980 and 1986), and

Yale Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of the nine colonial colleges ch ...

(BA Philosophy and History, 1978). He has written several books on the comparative history of

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

and

America The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. Baldwin also serves on the boards of the

New York Public Library The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second-largest public library in the United States behind the Library of Congress a ...

, the

American Council of Learned Societies The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) is a private, nonprofit federation of 75 scholarly organizations in the humanities and related social sciences founded in 1919. It is best known for its fellowship competitions which provide a ra ...

, the Central European University, and as chair of the board of the

Center for Jewish History The Center for Jewish History is a partnership of five Jewish history, scholarship, and art organizations in New York City, namely the American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, Leo Baeck Institute New York, Yeshiva Univ ...

Philanthropy

With his wife Lisbet Rausing, who is an heir of the

Tetra Pak Tetra Pak is a Swedish multinational food packaging and processing company headquartered in Switzerland. The company offers packaging, filling machines and processing for dairy, beverages, cheese, ice cream and prepared food, including distr ...

fortune, Baldwin co-founded the Arcadia Fund in 2001. The Fund has given away over $1 billion to charities and scholarly institutions globally that preserve cultural heritage and the environment and promote

open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...

. Arcadia-funded projects include the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, The Endangered Archives Programme at the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit li ...

and Fauna & Flora International's Halcyon Land and Sea fund. Baldwin joined the advisory board of the

Wikimedia Endowment The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (WMF) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, and registered there as a charitable foundation. It is the host of Wikipedia, the eighth most visited website ...

in 2016. Baldwin and Rausing gave $5 million to the Wikimedia Endowment in 2017 and are listed among the biggest benefactors to the

Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (WMF) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, and registered there as foundation (United States law), a charitable foundation. It is the host of Wikipedia, th ...

Publications

*''The Politics of Social Solidarity: Class Bases of the European Welfare State, 1875-1975'' (Cambridge University Press, 1990) *''Reworking the Past: Hitler, the Holocaust and the Historians' Debate'', edited with an introduction (Beacon Press, 1990) *''Contagion and the State in Europe, 1830-1930'' (Cambridge University Press, 1999) *''Disease and Democracy: The Industrialized World Faces AIDS'' (University of California Press, Berkeley, and the Milbank Memorial Fund, New York, 2005) *''The Narcissism of Minor Differences: How America and Europe Are Alike'' (Oxford University Press, 2009) * ''The Copyright Wars: Three Centuries of Trans-Atlantic Battle'' (Princeton University Press, 2014) * ''Command and Persuade: Crime, Law, and the State across History'' (MIT Press 2021) * ''Fighting the First Wave: Why the Coronavirus was Tackled so Differently across the Globe'' (Cambridge University Press, 2021) * ''Athena Unbound: Why and How Scholarly Knowledge Should Be Free for All'' (The MIT Press, 2023)

References

External links

Page at UCLA
detailing various publications.
Academic publications
{{DEFAULTSORT:Baldwin, Peter Living people 21st-century American historians 21st-century American philanthropists University of California, Los Angeles faculty New York University faculty Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Yale College alumni 1956 births