Historian, Journalist, and Public Scholar
David M. Perry is an author, journalist, and historian. He is associate director of undergraduate studies in history at the University of Minnesota, and is the author of four books, including The Public Scholar: A Practical Handbook (John Hopkins University Press) and the co-author of Oathbreakers and The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe, both from HarperCollins. He also wrote Sacred Plunder: Venice and the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade (Pennsylvania State University Press). His forthcoming book is Men: A History of the Idea ( Basic Books). Perry’s prolific essays and opinion pieces have been published in The New York Times, CNN, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, and he’s a regular columnist for The Minnesota Star Tribune. A sought-after speaker on public scholarship, public writing, and history, he’s spoken on campuses across the country, including Wesleyan University, New York University, University of Virginia, and Queens College, CUNY.
As a history professor at Dominican University in Chicago, Perry was frustrated with how rarely the media seemed to understand the role history was playing in forging our present. As the dad of a boy with Down syndrome, he saw an urgent need to make the ways that attitudes and policies shape lives for good and for ill more visible to more people. The solution to both: adapt the academic skills of research, analysis, persuasion, and teaching, and learn to write for broader audiences. Since then, he has trained academics in how to write for public media for over a decade, with success stories in outlets like The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, CNN and many more.
Perry teaches faculty and graduate students the nuts and bolts of writing for the general public. His hands-on workshops teach participants how to build on their academic expertise and translate what they already know in order to reach new audiences while maintaining one’s integrity as a scholar. He covers pragmatic topics: the art of the pitch, finding the right venue, managing social media profiles, getting paid, making it count for tenure and promotion, and protecting yourself from trolls and harassment. He also provides strategies to simultaneously maintain academic authority and be accessible to the broader public. Perry’s workshops focus on the how. Perry’s keynote lectures talk about the why. In this age of new media, new threats, new opportunities, academics and—critically—our institutions can and must do so much more in order to support public scholarship across all disciplines.
David M. Perry received his PhD in History from the University of Minnesota, was Professor at Dominican University for 10 years, and in 2017 returned to the University of Minnesota.
Praise for David M. Perry
“David Perry is one of the most trusted voices on how to think, write, and work in public. He has a clear ethic about the critical importance of intellectual labor at a moment when the risks of being public have rarely been greater, and the reasons why academics must risk it have rarely been so clear.”
— Tressie McMillan Cottom, New York Times columnist,
author of Thick: And Other Essays
“Out of all the workshops I’ve organized for graduate students at CUNY in the past 15 years, the public writing workshop led by David Perry remains the standout winner.”
— Sara McDougall, Professor of History at
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
“When it comes to public writing, no one is as practical, as helpful, or as good on the nuts and bolts as David Perry. He explains exactly how to break in, how to communicate with a general audience, and how to thrive and grow as a public scholar.”
— Irina Dumitrescu, Times Literary Supplement columnist
“Too many of our leading scholars and scientists write and speak only for each other. David Perry provides a primer for effective public intellectual engagement. The Public Scholar is an indispensable guide for scholars eager to enter the public discourse.”
— Peter J. Hotez, author of The Deadly Rise of Anti-science: A Scientist’s Warning
“A real-life Game of Thrones.” —The New York Times on Oathbreakers
“Incandescent and ultimately intoxicating.” —The Boston Globe on The Bright Ages
