The American Academy of Political and Social Science (AAPSS) elected five scholars as AAPSS Fellows, “in recognition of their contributions to society through research and public service.” Remarkably, four of the five – Lawrence Bobo, Timothy Smeeding, Claude Steele, and CASBS director Margaret Levi – are former CASBS fellows.
The AAPSS announced the Fellow elections in a November 29, 2016 press release.
AAPSS was founded in 1889, created to synthesize and advance research on contemporary political, economic, social, and policy issues. Its Fellows Program was begun in 2000, with each fellowship named for distinguished past AAPSS members. The program “recognizes distinguished contributions to scholarship and to public policy, emphasizing the mission of the Academy – social science in the public interest.” The new Fellows are among only 114 elected since the program’s founding. The press release credits its Fellows for “research that has changed our understanding of human behavior and the world in which we live…”
Lawrence Bobo (CASBS fellow 1988-89, 2007-08) is the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University. He is founding editor of the Du Bois Review, a scholarly, multidisciplinary and multicultural journal devoted to social science research and criticism about race. Fittingly, he is the 2017 AAPSS W.E.B. Du Bois Fellow.
Timothy Smeeding (CASBS fellow 1994-95) is the Lee Rainwater Distinguished Professor of Public Affairs and Economics at the University of Wisconsin’s Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs. He is coauthor of three books in CASBS’s Tyler Collection: Income Distribution in OECD Countries: Evidence from the Luxembourg Income Study; Wealth and Welfare States: Is America a Laggard or Leader?; and Poor Kids in a Rich Country: America’s Children in Comparative Perspective. A specialist in the analysis of poverty, economic and intergenerational mobility, inequality, and consumption and wealth, Smeeding is the 2017 AAPSS John Kenneth Galbraith Fellow.
Claude Steele (CASBS fellow 1994-95, director 2005-09) is professor psychology at University of California, Berkeley, and a former CASBS director. He is highly regarded for his work on “stereotype threat,” and traces the birth of that research program to his 1994-95 CASBS fellowship year. His acclaimed book, Whistling Vivaldi and Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us, resides in CASBS’s Tyler Collection.
In addition to her current role as CASBS director, Margaret Levi (CASBS fellow 1993-94, director 2014- ) also is professor of political science at Stanford University as well as the Jere L. Bacharach Professor Emerita of International Studies in the department of political science at the University of Washington. Her AAPSS election is in recognition of contributions she has made to social science and her efforts to bring the results of her research to public attention. Specifically, the AAPSS citation notes that Levi has made "foundational contributions in comparative politics, the ways in which the quality of government can be improved, and political economies that can sustain workers."
Levi is former president of the American Political Science Association (APSA). APSA’s PSNow blog interviewed her on the occasion of her election. Read the interview here.
News of the AAPSS election capped a year in which Levi also was inducted as a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Levi is honored by the AAPSS election, and even more so by the fact that she was named the 2017 AAPSS Robert A. Dahl Fellow.
"I am thrilled to be selected as a member of the American Academy of Political and Social Science," said Levi. "For more than a century the AAPSS has dedicated itself to a mission I share: using social science to address major societal problems. I am particularly proud to hold the Robert Dahl Fellowship; the fact that [Nobel Prize winner] Elinor Ostrom held the same designation makes me prouder still. These were two of the real intellectual giants of their period, and I hope I can contribute even a fraction of what they have to the advancement of social science and society."
Robert Dahl himself, notably, was a CASBS fellow during the 1955-56 and 1966-67 academic years.
The elected AAPSS Fellows will be inducted at a ceremony to be held in Washington, D.C. on May 18, 2017.
