Peter Baldwin (professor)

Peter Baldwin (born December 22, 1956)^[1] is a research professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles, Global Distinguished Professor at New York University, and a philanthropist.^[2]

Peter Baldwin
Peter Baldwin
Born	(1956-12-22) December 22, 1956 (age 68)
Occupation	Professor & philanthropist

Early life

Baldwin's parents were the medieval historians Jenny Jochens and John W. Baldwin.^[3]: 450

Academic career

He was educated at Harvard (MA and PhD, both in History 1980 and 1986), and Yale (BA Philosophy and History, 1978).^[4] He has written several books on the comparative history of Europe and America.

Baldwin also serves on the boards of the New York Public Library,^[5] the American Council of Learned Societies,^[6] the Central European University,^[7] and as chair of the board of the Center for Jewish History.^[8]

Philanthropy

With his wife Lisbet Rausing, who is an heir of the Tetra Pak 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.^[9]

Arcadia-funded projects include the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities,^[10] The Endangered Archives Programme at the British Library^[11] and Fauna & Flora International's Halcyon Land and Sea fund.

Baldwin joined the advisory board of the Wikimedia Endowment in 2016.^[12] Baldwin and Rausing gave $5 million to the Wikimedia Endowment in 2017^[13] and are listed among the biggest benefactors to the Wikimedia Foundation.^[14]

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)^[15]
• The Copyright Wars: Three Centuries of Trans-Atlantic Battle (Princeton University Press, 2014)^[16]
• 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)^[17]