Peter Baldwin

Peter Baldwin has written widely on the comparative historical development of the modern state, across Europe and the US. He analyses contemporary issues in historical perspective, whether that be the class coalitions underpinning the modern welfare state, 19th century public health strategies that shaped the way that AIDS and Covid epidemics were fought a century later, the long-standing battles over intellectual property that inform our current disputes over copyright, downloading, internet piracy, and open access.

He has taught at Harvard University, the University of California at Los Angeles and New York University. He serves on the boards of the New York Public Library, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Wikimedia Endowment, the Central European University, and the Danish Institute of Advanced Studies. His journalistic writings have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, CNN, Newsweek, New Republic, Huffington Post, Der Spiegel, Berliner Zeitung and many others.

Hi current book is Athena Unbound: Why and How Scholarly Knowledge Should Be Free for All, published by MIT Press and available for download here.