Our website uses cookies to understand how you navigate our content and to give you the best browsing experience.
Please read our Data Protection & Use Notification to learn more.
Our website uses cookies to understand how you navigate our content and to give you the best browsing experience.
Please read our Data Protection & Use Notification to learn more.
May 25, 2020 • Caitlin Burns
Dr. Peter Siskind Associate Provost for Finance and Planning Years at Arcadia: 16 Expertise: post-World War II American political and urban/suburban history Advice to students: “I'm a big fan of complexity. It's a trait of a lot of historians, to try to not reduce things to single causes or...
Nov 18, 2019 • Jen Retter
Dr. Peter Siskind was appointed associate provost for Finance and Planning as of Nov. 1. Dr. Siskind, who had served in this role on an interim basis since June 1, coordinates strategic and financial planning for Academic Affairs and serves as a liaison with the Office of Financial and...
Dec 18, 2018 • Jen Retter
Dr. Peter Siskind, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, assistant professor of History, and executive director of the Urban History Association (UHA), was a primary organizer of UHA’s Ninth Biennial Conference, held in Columbia, S.C. from Oct. 18 to 21. More than 400 scholars...
Dec 13, 2018 • Caitlin Burns
On Reading Day, Dec. 11, the University community heard from the Uknighted Budget, Aspirational, and Shared Governance and Transparency Committees in a highly anticipated follow-up to the April and September community-wide meetings. In this third meeting, the Budget and Aspirational Committees...
Sep 24, 2018 • Caitlin Burns
The Arcadia community came together on Sept. 20 for the UKnighted Campus Communitywide kickoff meeting engage with President Ajay Nair and the chairs of the Shared Governance and Transparency, Aspirational, and Budget Task Force committees. At the meeting, which was a follow up to the April 20...
May 11, 2018 • Andrea Walls
The Arcadia campus came alive with the return of more than 300 Beaver College and Arcadia alumni, family, and friends for Alumni Weekend, May 4 and 5. Guests came from near and far to remember, relive, and reunite with the University community during events and reunions. The celebratory weekend...
Apr 25, 2018 • Caitlin Burns
By Caitlin Joyce '20 On March 29, a panel, “1968: Transformations in Art, Media, and Culture,” discussed how political and social climate changes during that year influenced pop culture. The panel, part of the Global 1968: Explosions and Legacies series, featured Dr. Bruce Campbell Jr.,...
Jun 15, 2015 • Christopher Sarachilli
At this year’s May Graduate Commencement, Dr. Peter Siskind, assistant professor of history and chair of the historical and political studies department, received the 2015 Lloyd M. Abernethy Faculty Outstanding Service Award, presented every two years to a full-time faculty member or professional...
May 18, 2015 • Purnell Cropper
Against a backdrop of blue skies and Grey Towers Castle, nearly 500 students received baccalaureate degrees at Arcadia’s 2015 Undergraduate Commencement on May 15. The previous evening, approximately 400 graduate students received master's and doctoral degrees. Deogratias Niyizonkiza, founder of...
Mar 10, 2015 • Purnell Cropper
On March 2, nine recent alumni of the Historical and Political Studies department returned to campus to speak to more than 40 students and graduating seniors about working in the field. Through the panel, current students saw “the range of different types of careers that majors in the department...
Dr. Siskind has been Associate Provost since 2019; he focuses on Academic Affairs budgets/finance and leads the Division of Student Success. Previously, he was a long-time faculty member in the Department of Historical & Political Studies specializing in American political, urban/suburban, and environmental history. He came to Arcadia in 2004 and was awarded tenure in 2010.
Dr. Siskind’s earlier administrative work at Arcadia included a one-year appointment as Associate Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences in 2018-2019, six years as Chair of the Department of Historical & Political Studies from 2012-2018, and interim Dean of Undergraduate Studies for the 2011-2012 academic year. He also served as President of Arcadia’s first Faculty Senate from 2014 to 2016 and was 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. Beyond Arcadia, he served as Executive Director of the Urban History Association from 2017-2020.
In the Arcadia classroom, Siskind continues to teach a variety of courses on U.S. history and the United States’ relationship with the world including: F.D.R. to Obama: U.S. Politics and Reform; The Vietnam Wars; The U.S. & Vietnam: Then & Now, which includes a one-week travel component to Ho Chi Minh City; Philadelphia Revealed: Finding the Hidden City; America in the 1960s; America as Empire.
University of Pennsylvania
Ph.D., History
Dartmouth College
A.B., Religion
Dr. Siskind’s historical 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).