Peter Baldwin is a professor of history at UCLA, Global Distinguished Professor at NYU, and co-founder of the Arcadia Foundation. Since 2002, Arcadia has given away close to one billion dollars to safeguard cultural heritage, preserve the environment, and support open access.

His scholarly work deals with the development of the modern state in Europe and the US over the past two centuries. He has written books on the welfare state, on public health and contagious disease, and on copyright. His latest books are on the covid pandemic (Fighting the First Wave: Why the Coronavirus was Tackled So Differently across the Globe, on the deep history of crime and its prevention (Command and Persuade: Crime, Law, and the State across History) and on open access (Athena Unbound: Why and How Scholarly Knowledge Should Be Free for All).

He also serves on the boards of the American Council of Learned Societies, the Danish Institute for Advanced Studies, the Central European University, and is chair of the Board of the Center for Jewish History.