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Apr 30, 2019

Kathleen Mullan Harris has received the prestigious honor of being elected into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Harris is a Carolina Population Center Faculty Fellow and is UNC’s James Haar Distinguished Professor of Sociology.

The American Academy of Arts & Sciences issued this announcement New 2019 Academy Members Announced. UNC’s College of Arts & Sciences published this announcement.

Three from UNC-Chapel Hill elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Republished from the College of Arts & Sciences

Three faculty members from UNC-Chapel Hill – Kathleen M. HarrisJodi Magness and Bryan L. Roth – have been elected into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Harris (sociology) and Magness (religious studies) are in UNC’s College of Arts & Sciences. Roth (pharmacology) is in the UNC School of Medicine.

The academy announced the election of its 2019 fellows on April 17. This year, more than 200 individuals with compelling achievements in academia, business, government and public affairs were recognized.

Jodi Magness (front) with students in 2018 at a dig in Huqoq, Israel. (photo by Jim Haberman)

The academy was founded in 1780. Its dual mission remains essentially the same 239 years later with honorees from increasingly diverse fields and with the work now focused on the arts, democracy, education, global affairs and science.

“With the election of these members, the academy upholds the ideals of research and scholarship, creativity and imagination, intellectual exchange and civil discourse and the relentless pursuit of knowledge in all its forms,” said David W. Oxtoby, academy president.

The 2019 class includes former First Lady Michelle Obama, poet and foundation president Elizabeth Alexander (Andrew W. Mellon Foundation), chemical and biological engineer Kristi S. Anseth (University of Colorado Boulder), author Jonathan Franzen, actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith and cell biologist Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz (Howard Hughes Medical Institute), among others.

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

Read more about the 239th class of new members.

View a historical list of Carolina’s inductees.