Two University of Maryland Faculty Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Two University of Maryland faculty members have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies. Michele J. Gelfand, Distinguished University Professor, psychology,  and Frances E. Lee, distinguished scholar-teacher of government and politics, are among the more than 200 new members in Academy’s 239th class who are being recognized for their accomplishments in academia, business, government, and public affairs.

Their election brings the total number of UMD faculty who are members of national academies to 58. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences was founded in 1780 by John Adams, John Hancock, and others who believed the new republic should honor exceptionally accomplished individuals and engage them in advancing the public good. According to the Academy, its dual mission remains essentially the same with honorees drawn from increasingly diverse fields and whose work focuses on the arts, democracy, education, global affairs, and science.

Gelfand’s work on negotiation, justice, workplace diversity, cultural influences on conflict, and cross-cultural psychology has earned wide recognition. She has been published in top journals including Science, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Academy Management Review, Annual Review of Psychology, and many others. As both a Distinguished University Professor and Distinguished Scholar-Teacher, Gelfand has written and edited several books including Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wires Our World, Values, Political Action and Change in the Middle East and the Arab Spring, The Handbook of Negotiation and Culture, and multiple volumes of Advances in Culture Psychology. In addition to being a member of the Board of the National Academy of Sciences, Gelfand has also received numerous honors and prestigious invitations including the Outstanding Contributions to Cultural Psychology Award from the Society for Personal and Social Psychology and the Annaliese Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

Lee, a thought leader in government, public policy, legislative politics and political institutions, is the award-winning author of Beyond Ideology: Politics, Principles and Partisanship in the U.S. Senate. Lee also is the coauthor of Sizing Up The Senate: The Unequal Consequences of Equal Representation and the comprehensive textbook, Congress and Its Members. Her books have received national recognition, including the American Political Science Association’s Richard F. Fenno Award for the best book on legislative politics, and the D. B. Hardeman Award—presented by the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation for the best book on a congressional topic—in both 1999 and 2009. She is co-editor of Legislative Studies Quarterly, a scholarly journal specializing in legislatures and her research has also appeared in numerous journal outlets.

Gelfand and Lee join other distinguished individuals elected this year, including artist Mark Bradford, journalist James M. Fallows (The Atlantic) former First Lady Michelle Obama, business leader Charles H. Robbins (Cisco Systems) actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith, and many others to round out the cohort of more than 200 notable individuals.

“One of the reasons to honor extraordinary achievement is because the pursuit of excellence is so often accompanied by disappointment and self-doubt,” said David W. Oxtoby, president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. “We are pleased to recognize the excellence of our new members, celebrate their compelling accomplishments, and invite them to join the Academy and contribute to its work.”

The new class will be inducted at a ceremony in October 2019 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The full list of the newly elected members is available at www.amacad.org/newly-elected-members-2019.

This article originally appeared on UMD Right Now.

April 17, 2019