Political Science Faculty

Peter Skerry

Professor

Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture University of Virginia

Chairman, Immigration Policy Roundtable of the Citizens Commission on Immigration, a Braver Angels initiative

Photo of Peter Skerry

Peter Skerry

Ph.D.

Contact

McGuinn Hall Room 228

Telephone: 617-552-3112

Email: peter.skerry@bc.edu

Education

  • Ph.D., Harvard University

Courses

Immigration/refugee policy and politics 

Racial, ethnic, and religious pluralism in the U.S.

Islam in American society and politics

Societal change and political institutions

Research Interests

Racial and Ethnic Politics; Immigration Policy

Curriculum Vitae

Biography

Peter Skerry is professor of political science at Boston College and a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. He was previously professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, and taught political science at UCLA, where he was Director of Washington Programs at the Center for American Politics and Public Policy. He was also Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and Research Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He served as co-convenor of the Brookings-Duke Immigration Policy Roundtable, and as co-director of the Dialogue on Islam in America at the American Enterprise Institute. He was a member of the Malta Forum, a dialogue between Western and Muslim public intellectuals convened by the Institute for American Values. He served on the Advisory Council on European/Transatlantic Issues at the Heinrich Böll Foundation of the Bündis 90/Die Grünen (the German Green Party). He has been awarded residential fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the American Academy in Berlin, and the Russell Sage Foundation. 

Professor Skerry is currently on the Research and Programs Committee of the Board of Directors of the Pioneer Institute in Boston. He previously served on the board of the United Neighborhood Organization (UNO), a Chicago-based Latino community organization and charter school operator. He is currently chairman of the Immigration Policy Roundtable of the Citizens Commission on Immigration, an initiative of Braver Angels, a nationwide citizens movement seeking to depolarize American politics.

Professor Skerry has published in a variety of scholarly and general interest publications, including Society, Publius, Journal of Policy History, The Forum, The New Republic, Slate, The Public Interest, The Wilson Quarterly, National Review, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, National Affairs, The Weekly Standard, First Things, Foreign Affairs, The American Interest, and American Purpose.

He is author of Counting on the Census: Race, Group Identity, and the Evasion of Politics (Brookings) and Mexican Americans: The Ambivalent Minority (Free Press/Harvard University Press), which was awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.  For Polity Press, he is currently working on a book examining the sources of and possible responses to America’s continuing immigration challenges.

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