2021 AAPSS Fellows Announced

Five distinguished scholars will be inducted as fellows of the American Academy of Political and Social Science in 2021. The AAPSS inducts a new cohort of fellows each year, in recognition of contributions that advance science and deepen public understanding of human behavior and social dynamics.

With the addition of the 2021 inductees, there will be 145 fellows of the academy in total. Most are university-based scholars responsible for research that has changed our understanding of human behavior and the world in which we live; others are public servants who have used research and evidence in institutions of government to improve the common good.

The 2021 fellows of the AAPSS are:

Carol Anderson, a diplomatic historian whose work focuses on public policy, particularly on how domestic and international policies intersect through the issues of race, justice, and equality in the United States. Her research examines how policy is made and unmade, and how racial inequality and racism affect policy processes and outcomes. Anderson—the AAPSS’s 2021 W. E. B. DuBois Fellow—is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies at Emory University.

Jacob Hacker, a political scientist whose specialty is American social policy. He has written widely on the evolution and implications of America’s patchwork of laws, regulations, and institutional arrangements. Hacker is Stanley Resor Professor of Political Science and director of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University. He is the AAPSS’s 2021 Robert A. Dahl Fellow.

Read more: Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson edited the volume New Policies, New Politics? Policy Feedback, Power-Building, and American Governance for The ANNALS of the American Political and Social Science

Rucker Johnson, a labor economist who specializes in the economics of education, particularly concerning the role of poverty and inequality in affecting life chances. His work has examined the interrelationships of inequities in multiple arenas, such as education, health, labor markets, and neighborhood conditions, at various stages of the life cycle. Johnson, the AAPSS’s 2021 Sir Arthur Lewis Fellow, is the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy in the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.

Read more: Rucker Johnson on “Addressing Racial Health Disparities: Looking Back to Point the Way Forward” in The ANNALS of the American Political and Social Science

Mary Pattillo, an urban sociologist whose work examines the interrelationships of race, class, ethnicity, urban space and gentrification, housing, education, the criminal justice system, politics, and urban policy. Her research on the Black middle class explores new terrain in the study of race and cities. Pattillo is the AAPSS’s 2021 James S. Coleman Fellow, and is the Harold Washington Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Northwestern University.

Read more from Mary Pattillo: “Negotiating blackness, for richer or for poorer” in Ethnography | “Mary Pattillo’s Sociology of the Black Middle Class” in Critical Sociology

Kathryn Sikkink, a political scientist whose scholarship focuses on international norms and institutions, transnational advocacy networks, the impact of human rights law and policies, and transitional justice. Her recent work studies the relationship between individual liberty and collective responsibilities. She is the Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School at Harvard University, and AAPSS’s 2021 Mahatma M.K. Gandhi Fellow.

“At a moment in history when the nation has trapped its democracy, economy, and society in what feels like endless self-inflicted wounds, it falls on the social sciences to explain how the traps were set and where to find exit ramps,” said Kenneth Prewitt, Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs at Columbia University and President of the AAPSS. “Each of our 2021 fellows excels at exactly this. For that, the academy thanks them and salutes them.”

Anderson, Hacker, Johnson, Pattillo, and Sikkink will officially join the Academy at an event planned for fall 2021. For a complete list of AAPSS Fellows, click here