Photo by Ed Honowitz
PETER DREIER is the Dr. E. P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and chair of the Urban and Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College in Los Angeles. He teaches courses on urban politics and policy, community organizing, movements for social justice, and work and labor. In addition to being a scholar and teacher, he has been a journalist, community organizer, and government official. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and his B.A. from Syracuse University.
At Occidental he created and coordinates Campaign Semester, a program that since 2008 has provided students with a full semester credit to work full-time on election campaigns around the country.
He is coauthor of three other books—The Next Los Angeles: The Struggle for a Livable City, with Regina Freer, Bob Gottlieb, and Mark Vallianatos (University of California Press, 2006); Regions That Work: How Cities and Suburbs Can Grow Together, with Manuel Pastor, Eugene Grigsby, and Marta Lopez-Garza (University of Minnesota Press, 2000); and Place Matters: Metropolitics for the 21st Century, with John Mollenkopf and Todd Swanstrom (University Press of Kansas, 2nd ed., 2005). Place Matters won the Michael Harrington Book Award, given by the American Political Science Association for the “outstanding book that demonstrates how scholarship can be used in the struggle for a better world.” Dreier also coedited, with Jennifer Wolch and Manuel Pastor, Up Against the Sprawl: Public Policy and the Making of Southern California (University of Minnesota Press, 2004).
Dreier writes frequently for the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, American Prospect, and the Huffington Post. His articles have also been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Newsday, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, New Republic, Dissent, Washington Monthly, Progressive, Forward, Commonweal, Chronicle of Higher Education, and elsewhere.
His scholarly articles have appeared in many edited books as well as in such journals as the Harvard Business Review, Urban Affairs Review, Social Policy, Journal of the American Planning Association, North Carolina Law Review, Perspectives on Politics, Columbia Journalism Review, Housing Policy Debate, National Civic Review, Planning, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Journal of Urban Affairs, Cityscape, Social Problems, Housing Studies, Humanity and Society, New Labor Forum, and other professional journals.
Dreier is chair of Cry Wolf Project, a nonprofit think tank that examines the accuracy of statements by business groups, politicians, and the media that have predicted economic disaster if health, safety, and environmental protections became law. Dreier is also on the boards of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, the National Housing Institute, Invest in Kids, and the Pasadena Educational Foundation. He served on the executive committee of Housing LA, a broad coalition of labor, community, and faith-based groups, and on the board of the Southern California Association for Non-Profit Housing. Over the years he has worked closely with many unions, community groups, public interest organizations, and others on campaigns for social justice. He has been a member of Los Angeles City Council task forces on economic development and on affordable housing, a member of the Bring LA Home blue-ribbon task force on homelessness, and a member of the Community Reinvestment Task Force of United Way of Los Angeles.
Dreier is married to Terry Meng, a nurse practitioner, and lives in Pasadena. They have twin daughters, Amelia Marsh Dreier and Sarah Michaela Dreier.