Rate My Professor Glenn Petersen

Glenn Petersen is Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Baruch College, part of the City University of New York's Weissman School of Arts and Sciences, a position he has held since 1977. He is also Professor in the Anthropology Ph.D. Program and the Liberal Studies M.A. Program at the CUNY Graduate Center since 1986. Petersen obtained his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Columbia University in 1977 and his B.A. in Anthropology from California State College, Hayward, in 1970. Prior to his academic career, he served as an Aviation Electronics Technician in the United States Navy from 1964 to 1968, experiences that inform his work on war and trauma. He previously chaired the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Baruch College until June 2002 and has held various administrative roles, including Acting Deputy Chairman and Secretary of the department in the early 1980s.

Petersen's academic interests center on Micronesian ethnography, including adaptation, integration, political organization, chieftainship and hierarchy, constitutional government, warfare, peace, violence, decolonization, sovereignty, and postcolonial states. His extensive fieldwork in Pohnpei and other Micronesian islands has produced seminal works such as War and the Arc of Human Experience (Hamilton Books/Rowman & Littlefield, 2021), which draws on his Vietnam War experiences; Traditional Micronesian Societies: Adaptation, Integration, and Political Organization (University of Hawaii Press, 2009); and One Man Cannot Rule a Thousand: Fission in a Ponapean Chiefdom (University of Michigan Press, 1982). Other notable publications include articles in Anthropology & Humanism (2019), Journal de la Société des Océanistes (2015), and Pacific Studies. He has received numerous honors, including multiple PSC-CUNY Faculty Research Awards (2000, 1993, 1990, etc.), National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships (1983-1984, 1981), a Wenner-Gren Foundation Grant (1983), and a Senior Research Fellowship at the Australian National University (1989-1990). Petersen has testified before U.S. House and Senate subcommittees on the termination of the U.S. Pacific Islands Trusteeship, advised the Permanent Mission of the Federated States of Micronesia to the United Nations (1999-2002), and organized symposia for the American Anthropological Association. His influence extends through editorial refereeing for the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania and participation in professional organizations.