Peter Wood

Peter is president of the National Association of Scholars. A former professor of anthropology and college provost, he is the author of

Wrath: America Enraged (October 2021) and 1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project (November 2020). He is also the author of several other books about American culture, including Diversity: The Invention of a Concept (2003); A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now (2007); Diversity Rules (2020). He is editor-in-chief of the journal Academic Questions.

He is the co-author of Sustainability: Higher  Education’s New Fundamentalism. (2015); and Neo-Segregation at Yale (2019).

His shorter works include:

• “Free Speech in Academia.” Texas Review of Law & Politics. Vol. 27. No. 3. Summer 2023.
• “A Climate of Censorship: Eco-Orthodoxy on Campus.” Tom Slater, ed. Unsafe Space: The Crisis of Free Speech on Campus.  London: Palgrave. 2016.
• “The Illusion of Institutional Neutrality.”  The National Association of Scholars.  April 22, 2024.
• “The Architecture of Intellectual Freedom.”  National Association of Scholars.  January 26, 2016.

In 2019, he received the Jeane Kirkpatrick Prize for contributions to academic freedom. He received his B.A. from Haverford College (1975) and Ph.D. from the University of Rochester (1987).  His dissertation, Quoting Heaven, dealt with a heterodox religious movement and pilgrimage center in rural Wisconsin. He was a tenured associate professor of anthropology at Boston University where he also served in the university administration as associate provost and president’s chief of staff. He later served as provost of The King’s College, in New York City.