American Academy elects 20 faculty

Twenty from Harvard are among the 212 new members elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies and a leading center for independent policy research. Members contribute to academy studies of science and technology policy, global security, social policy, and American institutions, the humanities, and education.

Since its founding in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock, and other scholar-patriots, the academy has elected leading “thinkers and doers” from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the 18th century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 19th, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the 20th. The current membership includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners.

Among the 2011 class of scholars, scientists, writers, and artists, and civic, corporate, and philanthropic leaders are winners of the Nobel, Pulitzer, and Pritzker Prizes; the Turing Award; MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships; Kennedy Center Honors; and Grammy, Golden Globe, and Academy awards.

The new class will be inducted at an Oct. 1 ceremony at the academy’s headquarters in Cambridge, Mass.

The fellows from Harvard follow:

James Ireland Cash Jr., James E. Robison Professor of Business Administration Emeritus, Harvard Business School

Timothy J. Colton, Morris and Anna Feldberg Professor of Government and Russian Studies

David Paul Corey, professor of neurobiology, Harvard Medical School

George Q. Daley, professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology; professor of pediatrics, Harvard Medical School

Philip A. Fisher, Felice Crowl Reid Professor of English

Julio Frenk, dean of the Harvard School of Public Health; T & G Angelopoulos Professor of Public Health and International Development

Annette Gordon-Reed, professor of law; Carol Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute; professor of history in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Daniel Arie Haber, Kurt J. Isselbacher/Peter B. Schwartz Professor of Oncology, Harvard Medical School

Robert F. Higgins, senior lecturer of business administration, Harvard Business School

Jay Harold Jasanoff, Diebold Professor of Indo-European Linguistics and Philology

Farish Alston Jenkins Jr., professor of biology and curator of vertebrate paleontology; Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology; professor of anatomy

Alex S. Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy; Laurence M. Lombard Lecturer in the Press and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School

Frances Myra Kamm, Littauer Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy, professor of philosophy, Harvard Kennedy School

Thomas Forrest Kelly, Morton B. Knafel Professor of Music

Robert E. Kingston, professor of genetics, Harvard Medical School

David Laibson, Robert I. Goldman Professor of Economics

Louis Menand, Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of English

W. Jason Morgan, visiting scholar, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences

Michael R. Van Valkenburgh, Charles Eliot Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design

Daniel Martin Wegner, John Lindsley Professor of Psychology in Memory of William James

For a complete list of the new academy members.