Peter Salins is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a former editor and contributor to City Journal, and an expert on housing, immigration, higher education, and New York City. He is currently University Professor of Political Science at Stony Brook University and director of its graduate program in public policy; and formerly, Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs of the State University of New York system.

Salins is a fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners and director of the Citizens Housing and Planning Council of New York. He served on Mayor Giuliani’s Advisory Commission on the Health and Hospitals Corporation and prepared the mayor’s transition committee report on the City Planning Commission. Salins has provided testimony to the U.S. President’s Commission on Housing and advised the White House domestic policy staff on urban policy. He has made numerous TV and radio appearances, including on The Charlie Rose Show and NPR’s All Things Considered.

A former editor of the Journal of the American Planning Association, Salins is the author of The Smart Society: Strengthening America’s Greatest Resource, It’s People (2014), as well as The Ecology of Housing Destruction: Economic Effects of Public Intervention in the Housing Market (1980), and Assimilation, American Style (1997); coauthor of Scarcity by Design: The Legacy of New York City’s Housing Policies (1992); and editor of Housing America’s Poor (1987), and New York Unbound: The City and Politics of the Future (1988). His articles have appeared in Commentary, Reason, Journal of the American Institute of Planners, New York Times, Public Interest, New Republic, and City Journal. Salins holds a B.A. in architecture, M.A. in planning, and a Ph.D. in metropolitan studies, all from Syracuse University.