Yale faculty members William Eskridge Jr., Harold H. Koh, George Lindbeck, Annabel Patterson, Claude Rawson, Ian Shapiro and Ivan Szelenyi are among the new fellows voted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS).
Election to the AAAS “recognizes the distinguished contributions to your profession and is the result of an extensive selection process undertaken by our current members,” stated Donald Tosteson, president of the organization, in his letter to the new fellows. “The Academy honors leading intellectuals from both this country and abroad in every field and profession.”
Established in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin and George Washington to “cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity and happiness of a free, independent and virtuous people,” the AAAS now has about 3,500 Fellows and 600 Foreign Honorary members. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Academy sponsors a number of projects and publications, including the magazine, Daedelus.
Inducted in recent years to the AAAS from Yale were President Richard C. Levin, Stephen R. Anderson, Spyridon Artavanis-Tsakonas, David Bromwich, John Geanakoplos, Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, Peter W. Jones, J.D. McClatchy, Peter Charles Bonest Phillips, Ellen Rosand and Efim I. Zelmanov.
The following are brief academic profiles of this year’s recipients:
William Eskridge, Jr., the John A. Garver Professor of Jurisprudence at Yale Law School (of which he is an alumnus), is a noted scholar of constitutional law, statutory legislation, gender and sexuality law and hate crimes. Formerly a professor of law at Georgetown University, Eskridge is the author, co-author and editor of many publications, whose titles include “Cases and Materials on Constitutional Law: Themes for the Constitution’s Third Century;” “The Case for Same-Sex Marriage: From Sexual Liberty to Civilized Commitment;” and “Constitutional Stupidities, Constitutional Tragedies.” Eskridge has also served as a long-time faculty member at the Institute for Judicial Administration in New York and lectures regularly at law schools around the country and in Canada.
Harold Koh, who came to the United States at the age of seven as a political refugee from South Korea, is the Under Secretary of State for human rights, democracy and labor in the Clinton administration. He is currently on leave of absence from Yale Law School, where he is the Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law and director of the Orville H. Schell Jr. Center for International Human Rights. Appointed by President Clinton to head the Commission for Security and Cooperation in Europe — a human rights watchdog agency, among other functions — Koh has been a vocal champion of human rights for many years. The author of numerous articles and books on international law, international relations and human rights, Koh came to national prominence in 1993 arguing on behalf of Haitian refugees seeking asylum in the United States.
George Lindbeck, the Pitkin Professor Emeritus of Historical Theology, is a noted authority on Protestant and Catholic relations. Lindbeck serves on the faculty in both the Divinity School and the religious studies department. He is the author of six books, including “The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age” and “Challenge and Response: A Protestant Perspective on the Vatican Council.” Lindbeck has five honorary degrees and a Guggenheim Fellowship among his many awards. He was a delegate to the second Vatican Council in Rome in the 1960s and has long been involved in the effort to reconcile two doctrines that have separated Christians for centuries, namely the “faith-based” salvation of Protestants and the “good works” route to redemption of the Catholic church.
Annabel Patterson, the Karl Young Professor of English, has written widely in the field of Renaissance and early modern literature and culture. Her nine books include studies of the English literary giants Milton, Marvell and Shakespeare and inquiries into such topics as the history of censorship, the adaptation of Plato, Virgil and Aesop to later circumstances and the relationship between high and popular culture. Two of her most recent books, “Reading Between the Lines” and “Reading Holinshed’s Chronicles,” are seminal works on the merger of literature and history as categories of experience and academic disciplines. More than 40 articles and three edited collections of essays further reflect her commitment to transcend established cultural and academic boundaries. She came to Yale in 1994 as a full professor after serving eight years as a professor at Duke University.
Claude Rawson, the Maynard Mack Professor of English and chairman of the Yale Boswell editions, is a leading scholar of 18th-century English literature. “Henry Fielding and the Augustan Ideal Under Stress,” “Order from Confusion Sprung: Studies in 18th century Literature from Swift to Cowper” and “Satire and Sentiment 1660-1830” are only a few of the works that constitute his voluminous body of publications. In addition to the Boswell papers, his executive editorial stints include the Modern Language Review and the Yearbook of English Studies, and — with Peter Brooks and H.B. Nesbit — the “Cambridge History of Literary Criticism.” Rawson serves in an advisory capacity to universities and humanities institutions throughout the world, from the International Cultural Society of Korea and the Board of Advisors, University of London, to the Woodrow Wilson Fellowships program and the Institute for History of Mentalities, New Zealand.
Ian Shapiro is the chairman of the political science department and has been on the faculty at Yale since 1984. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School as well as a Ph.D. in political science from Yale. A respected expert on distributive politics and a sharp critic of the “rational choice” school of economic thought, he is the author of numerous articles and several books. Among them are “Political Criticism” and “The Evolution of Rights in Liberal Theory.” In his most recent book, “Democratic Justice,” Shapiro presents positive resolutions to the seemingly irreconcilable ideals of justice and democracy. He is also the co-author, with Donald Green, of “Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory: A Critique of Applications in Political Science.”
Ivan Szelenyi is the William Graham Sumner Professor of Sociology and chair of the department, with a joint appointment in the political science department. A native of Hungary who was expelled 25 years ago for his critical views of Communism, Szelenyi is arguably the foremost authority on the comparative sociology of post-Communist Europe. His distinguished academic career includes a professorship at the University of California, Los Angeles, which he held from 1988 until his appointment to Yale in 1999; positions of director of the Center for Social Research and professor at the Graduate School of the City University of New York; and professorship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Among the many publications he has authored and edited are the books “Making Capitalism without Capitalists Social Conflicts of Post-Communist Transitions” and “The New Class, State and Politics.”
The new AAAS Fellows will be inducted at a ceremony to be held in October.