Campus & Community

AAPSS honor three Harvard affiliates

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The American Academy of Political and Social Science (AAPSS) recognized its latest group of fellows at a ceremony held in Washington, D.C., on April 10. Robert Putnam, Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy, was among the group of five fellows.

Lawrence W. Sherman, president of AAPSS, noted that the academy designates a group of fellows each year “in order to recognize and honor individual social scientists for their distinguished scholarship in the social sciences, sustained efforts to communicate that scholarship to audiences beyond their own discipline, and professional activities that promise to continue to promote the progress of the social sciences.”

Each fellow is designated to a position named after a distinguished scholar and public servant who has written for the academy’s bimonthly journal, The Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science, during the past century. Putnam was designated as a Harold Lasswell Fellow.

Sherman further noted that, “the wide influence of the fellows’ work stands as an exemplar for all social scientists, both active and nascent.”

In the second year of its program, AAPSS designated 53 graduate fellows of the academy, one of whom is Harvard student Luba Feigenberg of the Graduate School of Education. Each graduate fellow was elected on the basis of nominations from his or her department according to three criteria: “an outstanding grasp” of a discipline’s theories and methods, as demonstrated through graduate course work; an enthusiasm for understanding social issues; and the promise of making substantial contributions to the social sciences in the future.

AAPSS also designated 144 junior fellows for a third year, one of whom was nominated from Harvard: Jeffrey Fernandez ’05, a psychology concentrator. Each junior fellow was elected on the basis of nominations from his or her undergraduate department according to the same criteria as the graduate fellows.