Yale Bulletin and Calendar

May 19, 2000

Volume 28, Number 32

Seven from Yale are among
the new fellows of the AAAS

Seven Yale faculty members are among the 154 new fellows voted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS).

The new fellows are William Eskridge Jr., Harold H. Koh, George Lindbeck, Annabel Patterson, Claude Rawson, Ian Shapiro and Ivan Szelenyi.

Election to the AAAS recognizes the "distinguished contributions" each has made to their profession and "is the result of an extensive selection process" undertaken by current members of the organization, wrote AAAS president Donald in his letter to the new fellows. The Academy honors leading intellectuals from both the United States 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.

The following are brief academic profiles of the new AAAS members.

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 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.

Ivan Szelenyi is the William Graham Sumner Professor of Sociology and chair of the department, who also holds 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 a leading authority on the comparative sociology of post-Communist Europe. He taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, from 1988 until his appointment to Yale in 1999. He has also been a professor and director of the Center for Social Research at the Graduate School of the City University of New York and a professor 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."

William Eskridge, the John A. Garver Professor of Jurisprudence at the 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 the 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 as the commissioner on 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's many awards include five honorary degrees and a Guggenheim Fellowship. 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 a Protestant believe in salvation based on faith and a Catholic belief in good works as a route to redemption.

Claude Rawson, the Maynard Mack Professor of English and chair 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 16601830" 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, including the International Cultural Society of Korea, the board of advisors for the University of London, the Woodrow Wilson Fellowships program and the Institute for History of Mentalities in New Zealand.

Ian Shapiro, chair of the political science department, 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. An 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 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."

The new AAAS Fellows will be inducted at a ceremony to be held in October.

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