Dartmouth President James Wright elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Posted 05/31/01

Wright to join fellow inductees Robert Rubin, Madeleine Albright, Czech President Vaclav Havel, Stephen Sondheim and others in fall induction ceremony

Dartmouth College President James Wright has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the nation's leading learned society.

The Academy lauded Wright's influence in his scholarly field as well as his record of academic leadership. A historian who specializes in American political history and the history of the American West, Wright is the author or editor of five books, including Progressive Yankees: Republican Reformers in New Hampshire (1987) and The Politics of Populism: Dissent in Colorado (1974). He has been a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow and a Charles Warren Fellow at Harvard University and currently serves on the board of the Sherman Fairchild Foundation.

Wright is one of 185 new Fellows and 26 Foreign Honorary Members elected this year, including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Secretary of Labor Robert Rubin; Dean of the Annenberg School Kathleen Hall Jamieson; President of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Freeman A. Hrabowski III; composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim; photographer Richard Avedon; and President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic. Also new to the Academy this year is E. John Rosenwald, the retired Vice Chairman of Bear, Stearns and Co. who the New York Times dubbed "one of New York's premier philanthropists." Rosenwald, a member of the Dartmouth Board of Trustees from 1986 to 1996, served as its chair from 1993 to 1996.

A longtime academic leader and noted historian, James Wright has spent more than 30 years in higher education and has held a series of key positions at Dartmouth during one of the most eventful eras in its history. He is the College's 16th president.

Born in Madison, Wisc., Wright received a bachelor's degree from Wisconsin State University-Platteville and master's and doctoral degrees in history from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. A member of the Dartmouth community since 1969, he came to Hanover as an Assistant Professor of History, becoming first Associate Professor of History (1974) and then Professor of History (1980). He was senior historian at the University of Mid-America, a consortium of nine Midwestern universities in Lincoln, Neb., in academic year 1976-77 and a member of the faculty of the Dartmouth Institute from 1981-83. He served as Associate Dean of the Faculty at Dartmouth from 1981-85, as Dean of the Faculty from 1989-97 and as Acting President of the College during the first six months of 1995. He also served as Acting Provost and then Provost (1997-98). Wright has chaired a succession of key committees at the College, including the committee that proposed changes in the Dartmouth undergraduate curriculum that ultimately led to a comprehensive overhaul of the curriculum in 1993.

New Fellows of the Academy are nominated and elected by vote of current members.

"Election is the result of a highly competitive selection process that recognizes those who have made preeminent contributions to all scholarly fields and professions," said American Academy President James O. Freedman.

Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences was chartered "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 Academy's membership has included great minds and influential leaders ranging from George Washington and Ben Franklin to Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill. The current membership of 3,600 Fellows and 600 Foreign Honorary Members includes more than 150 Nobel laureates and 50 Pulitzer Prize winners.

This year's inductees will be welcomed as members at the annual induction ceremony on Oct. 13, 2001, in Cambridge, Mass.