Peter T. Siskind

Associate Provost for Finance and Planning, Assistant Professor of History

238 Easton Hall (215) 572-2110

PROFILE
About Me

Dr. Siskind specializes in American political, urban/suburban, and environmental history. He came to Arcadia in 2004 and was awarded tenure in 2010. He also serves as Executive Director of the Urban History Association.

In the Arcadia classroom, Siskind teaches a variety of courses on U.S. history and the United States’ relationship with the world including: America in the 1960s; America as Empire; F.D.R. to Obama: U.S. Politics and Reform; The Vietnam Wars; Philadelphia Then & Now; Urban & Suburban America; The U.S. & Vietnam: Then & Now, which includes a one-week travel component to Ho Chi Minh City. 

Dr. Siskind has also been active in administrative work at Arcadia. Currently, he is serving a one-year appointment during 2019-2020 as interim Associate Provost for Finance and Planning. Previously, he was Associate Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences for the 2018-2019 academic year, Chair of the Department of Historical & Political Studies from 2012-2018, and interim Dean of Undergraduate Studies for the 2011-2012 academic year. Siskind served as President of Arcadia’s first Faculty Senate from 2014 to 2016. In addition, he served as Chair both of the General Education Steering Committee that created Arcadia’s Undergraduate Curriculum in 2007 and of the Faculty Governance Task Force that created the University’s new Faculty Senate governance system in 2014.

Education History

University of Pennsylvania 2002

Ph.D., History

Dartmouth College 1990

A.B., Religion

Research Summary

Dr. Siskind’s scholarship examines the contours of modern American liberalism – its evolution and internal tensions, its potential and limitations. Much of his writing has focused on the politics of land use and development in the cities, suburbs, and recreational vacationlands on the post-World War II Northeast Corridor from the metropolitan areas of Boston to Washington, D.C. His most recent article is "'Enlightened System' or 'Regulatory Nightmare'?: New York's Adirondack Mountains and the Conflicted Politics of Environmental Land-Use Reform during the 1970s" (Journal of Policy History, 2019). Other prominent articles include: “Shades of Black and Green: The Making of Racial and Environmental Liberalism in Nelson Rockefeller’s New York” (Journal of Urban History, 2008); “Suburban Growth and Its Discontents: The Logic and Limits of Reform on the Northeast Corridor,” in The New Suburban History (University of Chicago Press, 2006).