Peter N. Gregory ’67

Peter died of a sudden heart attack March 19, 2025, at home in Starksboro, Vermont.   

He came to Princeton from Bronxville High School in New York, studied art history, joined Ivy, and volunteered at the New Jersey Neuro-Psychiatric Institute, where he also worked for a year after graduation. Peter remained lifelong friends with Ivy classmates Bill Stanard, George Wanklyn, and Doug Penick.

After military service in Thailand, Peter headed to California, first studying Japanese language and history at Claremont College, then taking intensive Japanese in Tokyo for a year, and finally pursuring a Ph.D. in Asian studies at Harvard, specializing in medieval Chinese Buddhism. He was ordained a lay practitioner of Zen Buddhism at the Los Angeles Zen Center and was instrumental in developing what became the Kuroda Institute for the Study of Buddhism, a nonprofit organized in 1976 to promote scholarship on Buddhism and its historical, philosophical, and cultural influences. Peter led Kuroda for 30 years as its executive director and president.

Peter taught briefly at UCLA and Stanford before joining the religious studies department of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana for 15 years. Peter moved to Smith College, where he held an endowed professorship in religion and East Asian studies. His scholarship was distinguished by his groundbreaking books on the Chinese monk Guifeng Zongmi, a seminal figure in the development of both Chan and Huayan Buddhist traditions. The range of his work was demonstrated by his production of a documentary exploring Zen Buddhism in America.

Peter is survived by his wife Margi; and two daughters.