�����Ƶ

Transcription:

Dear Members of the American �����Ƶ of Arts and Sciences:

I am so honored and surprised to be invited to join your illustrious group of leaders. I could never have imagined such a letter when I was growing up in a neighborhood where factory work was the order of the day, and even that was reserved for men. Yes, women worked hard as housewives, and perhaps “sales girls” in local department stores or dime stores, but we were the support system, not the principals.    

I say this just to express the surprise and gratitude expressed by my inner child of the past, someone who still lives within so many of us, and allows us to see the present as a gift.    

I hope you will tell me of any way I can help to strengthen this grand tradition that so helps to honor the changing realities of everyday life. You help me feel part of even a future I will never see.

With gratitude and hope – which is a form of planning!

Gloria Steinem

Transcription:

April 28, 2025

Dr. Goodwin Liu, Chair
Dr. Laurie L. Patton
American �����Ƶ of Arts and Sciences
Norton's Woods
136 Irving Street
Cambridge, Ma 02138-1996

Dear Dr. Liu and Dr. Patton:

Quianaqpak (big thank you!) for your letter informing me of my election to the American �����Ƶ of Arts and Sciences. I am honored to join this group of distinguished and accomplished men and women.

As an Inupiaq from the far northern reaches of the United States, I especially note the several members I have known and worked with from the American Indian community. We represent a unique part of our country’s history.

In 1966, as a non-lawyer, I wrote a research paper in a constitutional law course that convinced me Alaska Natives still had aboriginal title to all of Alaska, despite the colonization of Alaska by Russians and the acquisition of their interests by the United States in 1867. We formed the Alaska Federation of Natives to push for title to our lands.

With no funds and no communication systems among our 200 villages, we fought desperately to prevent over 100 million acres of our land from being taken from us, without compensation, by the new State of Alaska. Finally, in 1971, President Richard Nixon signed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. It transferred 44 million acres to us in a unique arrangement that allowed us to put to use almost $1 billion through a dozen regional corporations owned and controlled by Alaska Natives. In September 2024, Alaska Business Monthly published their annual list of the 49 highest grossing Alaska businesses for the year. More than half – 26 – were Alaska Native corporations.

We have also worked hard to revitalize our languages and cultural spirit throughout Alaska by focusing on our ancient values and instilling them into the new business entities that we own.

Through the years, as a legislator, president and co-chair of the Alaska Federation of Natives, chair of the Federal Subsistence Board, author, regional corporation president and professor, I have continued to strive for the betterment of not only Alaska Natives, but of all Alaskans. I share the honor of this nomination with those I have worked with and learned from during this journey.

Again, thank you. 
Sincerely,
William L. Iġġiaġruk Hensley

[signature]

Transcription:

24 April 2025

To: President’s Office, �����Ƶ

Dear Goodwin Liu and Laurie L. Patton,

I have just arrived in London to begin a two-month visit to the UK, where I was invited to present talks at Imperial College and the Universities of Manchester, Birmingham, and Cambridge, and to collaborate on research projects with my colleagues. A few minutes after my plane landed, I opened my computer and found an email from the “President’s Office.” As you might imagine, I am quite fast at deleting junk mail. However, I read a bit more and to my astonishment and delight I learned that I had been elected to be a member of the �����Ƶ.

Very shortly after this flood of delight, I realized to my amazement that my serious case of jet lag had completely disappeared. I am now considering submitting an article to the Journal of Irreproducible Results on an entirely new treatment for jet lag.

I have always admired the mission, work, and values of the �����Ƶ and I am truly honored and grateful for this recognition of my research in mathematical physics. I happily accept this great honor and will joyfully attend the Induction ceremony in Cambridge in October!

Sincerely yours,

[signature]

Carl M. Bender
Wilfred R and Ann Lee Konneker Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Physics

Transcription:

To the �����Ƶ

I received with pleasure, honor, and humility your announcement of my election to the �����Ƶ.

My initial association withe [sic] the �����Ƶ predates its current location, when I participated in a 1963 conference -- later an issue of Daedalus and a book -- on The Woman in America.

And after this beautiful building was built, I enjoyed many pleasant evenings with my husband, listening to music, to lectures, and an occasional dinner.

I am delighted not to join the �����Ƶ on my own, and accept your invitation with pleasure.

Yours sincerely, Lotte Bailyn
April, 2025

Transcription:

May 5, 2025

American �����Ƶ of Arts and Sciences
136 Irving Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
U.S.A.

To Whom It May Concern:

When I was a graduate student, I lived in a small apartment just a few blocks away from the �����Ƶ. Shrouded in trees, the �����Ƶ appeared to me as a mysterious and almost otherworldly place. Once, out of curiosity, I stepped inside and picked up an informational brochure. But I quickly realized that it was far too distinguished a world for someone like me—though I have continued to read ��æ�岹���ܲ� with admiration ever since.

Nearly thirty years have passed since then, and I could never have imagined that I would one day enter the �����Ƶ in a slightly different capacity. It is a moment that makes me feel as though I could proudly whisper this news to my younger self.

I would like to express my deepest respect to the �����Ƶ for opening its doors to scholars from around the world. Its commitment to freedom, diversity, and intellectual openness is what makes the United States so profoundly compelling to the world. As long as this �����Ƶ exists, I will continue to believe in America. I believe, indeed, that the great tradition of America lies in the future.

It is with great humility and a deep sense of honor that I accept the invitation to join this proud and venerable institution as an International Honorary Member.

Sincerely yours,

[signature]

Yasushi Watanabe

Transcription:

June 3, 2025

Dear President Patton and Chairman Liu,

There are letters you skim. And there are letters that stop you in your tracks and make you sit still. Yours was the latter.

I read it once. Then again, wowed. For me, it read as part of a glorious script.

Logline:
A filmmaker is welcomed into the �����Ƶ.

Description:
1780 to the present.

Starring:
Einstein, King, Kurosawa, Morrison.

Plot:
Help shape and protect the culture. Do it with precision, passion, presence. Do it with heart. It’s like getting the role of a lifetime. I humbly and gratefully accept.

I come to this moment as a maker of images, yes, but more deeply, as a filmmaker who believes that images don’t merely mirror the world. They bend its form and shift its course. They can excavate and invigorate. They can ask better questions about who we are, how we got here and what we owe each other. So, to be welcomed by the �����Ƶ, affirms that work as more than entertainment, but as architecture, as evidence, as legacy.

Following in the footsteps of artists who I hold dear is perhaps the biggest plot twist of this script. Julie Dash, who makes memory cinematic. Rita Dove, who wields language like ceremony. Barbara Chase-Ribound, who braids bronze with verse and verve. And those whose names history may not yet carry loudly, but whose work whispers to us still. To be placed even near their orbit is humbling.

Thank you for this extraordinary honor. I walk into this fellowship with curiosity, conviction and the quiet knowledge that I still have so much to learn.

Respectfully and gratefully,
Ava DuVernay

Transcription:

May 6, 2025

Justice Goodwin Liu, Chair of the Board
Dr. Laurie L. Patton, President
American �����Ƶ of Arts and Sciences
136 Irving Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

Dear Justice Liu and Dr. Patton,

I am deeply honored to be elected to the American �����Ƶ of Arts and Sciences, and I joyfully accept. I am humbled to join this community of innovative thinkers, including esteemed mentors and colleagues, who have given so much to the world. The �����Ƶ’s mission – “to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people” – is of fundamental importance, particularly at this moment in our nation’s history.

One of the fascinations of Earth Science is the vast range of processes and time-scales that we can contemplate: the evolution of the continents over billions of years, plate tectonics and mountain-building with a tempo of millions to hundreds of millions of years, and the strength of the solid Earth and how it interacts with changing ice sheets and sea-level on our warming planet over decadal to millennial time-scales. I am grateful for a career in which I have been free to study these and other key questions about the Earth, aided by a federal funding system which has used peer review as the measure of merit. I am also thankful for the wonderful group of students and post-docs whose talent, creativity and hard work has carried our research forward. Any recognition I receive is shared with them. Ensuring that their generation enjoys the same freedom to choose their own questions is critical.

Joining the �����Ƶ also has meaning in the history of my family. Emil Fischer, my paternal great-grandfather, was elected as an international honorary member in 1908. George Bogdan Kistiakowsky, my maternal grandfather whom I loved dearly, was elected as a member in 1933. I cherish this connection to them.

My heartfelt thanks for this honor. I look forward to contributing to the work of the �����Ƶ.

Sincerely,

[signature]

Karen M. Fischer
Louis and Elizabeth Scherck Distinguished Professor of Geological Sciences
Brown University

Transcription:

May 7, 2025

President Laurie Patton and Justice Goodwin Liu
American �����Ƶ of Arts and Sciences
136 Irving Street
Cambridge, MA 02138

Dear President Patton and Justice Liu,

[Revised version of �����Ƶ seal showing a scientist in the field]

Sincerely,

[signature]

Bob Goldstein
Departments of Biology and Art
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Transcription:

April 22, 2025

Dear Chairman Liu and President Patton:

With gratitude and humility, I accept this high honor of being elected to membership in the American �����Ƶ of Arts and Sciences. I sincerely appreciate this highly cherished unexpected recognition.

At the age of 81 years I stand on the shoulders of many: loved ones, mentors, community, colleagues and clients; and all others who believe that justice should be a goal of law. I thank the �����Ƶ for adding to the richness of my journey by electing me to membership in the class of 2025.

Warm regards,

[signature]

Elaine R. Jones
First Female lawyer to lead Thurgood Marshall’s Non-profit Law firm, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.

Transcription:

April 22, 2025

Dr. Gordon Liu, Chair of the Board
Dr. Laurie L. Patton, President
American �����Ƶ of Arts and Sciences
Norton’s Wood
136 Irving Street
Cambridge, MA 02138-1996

Dear Drs. Liu and Patton;

Thank you so much for your letter of April 21, notifying me that I’ve been elected to the American �����Ƶ of Arts and Sciences. I humbly and gratefully accept.

As I seek to express what your wonderful news means to me, I find myself gravitating to two activities that have been central to my life: the study of narrative and the sport of basketball. As a narrative theorist, I’ve proposed a default rhetorical definition that seeks to capture narrative both as a way of knowing and as a way of doing something in the world. Narrative is, I suggest, somebody telling somebody else on some occasion and for some purposes that something happened.

With your letter, you of course are the somebodies telling (it’s a default definition), and I am the somebody else. Your purposes are many: to give me the news (something happened!), to welcome me to the �����Ƶ, and, via that wonderful paragraph about other members (Benjamin Franklin! Martin Luther King, Jr.!, Georgia O’Keefe!), to help me recognize what an honor the election is. I can happily testify that you have brilliantly achieved those purposes, Indeed, my recurrent thought over the last few days has been, “how amazing—astounding, lucky, astonishing—to be your somebody else!”

With this letter, though, we switch roles: I become the somebody telling, you the somebody else, and my purpose is to convey, more fully than the previous paragraph does, my surprise, wonder, and gratitude. I turn, then, to an “as if” narrative about basketball, based on my unrealized dream of success in this sport that I love and that I played passionately into my fifties. It is as if the guy who walked on to his college team somehow managed, through a combination of good fortune, honest sweat, and the support of more people than he can name (though he insists on naming his spouse of more than fifty years, Elizabeth Menaghan), to get elected to the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame. It’s as if that dream has come true—except that being elected to the �����Ƶ is even better. Thank you again for telling me that it actually happened. And thank you for listening to this much of my story.

Sincerely,

[signature]

James Phelan (a.k.a. Somebody Else)

Transcription:

May 9, 2025

American �����Ƶ of Arts and Sciences
136 Irving Street
Cambridge, MA 02138-1996

Dear Members of the �����Ƶ,

I am honored to accept your invitation to join the American �����Ƶ of Arts and Sciences. To be included among the extraordinary individuals who have shaped our world through scholarship, leadership, creativity, and public service is both humbling and meaningful.

I am committed to supporting the �����Ƶ’s efforts to foster knowledge, encourage collaboration, and help develop solutions to the challenges ahead. It is a privilege to engage with the organization and contribute to its important mission.

I look forward to working alongside fellow members to help shape new opportunities and advance meaningful progress for our nation and the broader global community.

Sincerely

[signature]

Ross Perot, Jr.
Chairman, The Perot Companies and Hillwood

Transcription:

June 2, 2025

Goodwin Liu, Chair of the Board
Laurie l. Patton, President
�����Ƶ
136 Irving St.
Cambridge, MA 02138

Dear Justice Liu and Dr. Patton,

I am pleased and honored to accept my election to the �����Ƶ. Astonished, amazed, and over-whelmed also describe how I feel about joining the ranks of this distinguished and talented group.

I am a paleoethnobotanist, an archaeologist and anthropologist with botanical training who studied past plant-people interrelationships through the archaeological record. I was never a digger, but I loved field work. Field work for me was collecting plants for my comparative collection, talking to farmers about their crops, measuring fields to calculate yields, mapping land-use patterns, extracting sediment cores from swamps. Much of it on foot, on horse-back, or bumping along 4-wheel drive tracks in a hired vehicle.

I also loved the lab work. Getting charred plant bits to release from site sediment samples (a process called flotation, or “washing the dirt,” as one assistant put it). Recovering phytoliths (plant opal silica bodies) from site sediments or environmental cores. Finding the starch preserved on ground stone tools and other artifact surfaces. Sitting at the microscope, discovering and documenting the plants, especially the foods, used by past populations.

I made my share of discoveries, and my interpretations of archaeological plant remains from sites and environmental cores in Ecuador, Peru, Guatemala, and the Caribbean have contributed to our understanding of early agriculture in the New World. Not me alone; none of it would have happened without my colleagues, students, and mentors. What I was best at was figuring out how to get the evidence needed to address the question. Developing methods. And I wrote a mean grant proposal!

[end page 1  |  begin page 2]

Again, I am honored to be elected to the �����Ƶ, and very pleased for the recognition my election helps bring to paleoethnobotany, a small field central for understanding the relationships of people to the plant word, relationships vital to life, now and in the past.

Sincerely yours,

[signature]

Dr. Deborah M. Pearsall, Professor Emerita

[embedded color image of a quilt with photographs of Pearsall and other objects related to her career, with the following caption provided by the author: “Change of Focus” May 2020. The photo that inspired this quilt was taken before my retirement in 2013 in my lab, where I studied archaeological plant remains. I’ve depicted my change of focus in complementary colors because the quilter I’m becoming and the scientist I was are more alike than different. Intense. Persistent. Creative. Pragmatic. Highly tolerant of tedium.]

Transcription:

April 22nd, 2025

American �����Ƶ of Arts and Sciences
136 Irving Street
Cambridge, MA 02138-1966

Dear Members of the American �����Ƶ of Arts and Sciences,

Thank you for informing me of my election as a member of the American �����Ƶ of Arts and Sciences.

It is a tremendous honor, one that I share with the many talented students and postdoctoral fellows with whom I have had the privilege to work over the past 23 years. Many of them are pictured below in a photograph from our lab reunion last year.

I would also like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to my family, friends, mentors, collaborators, and colleagues for their unwavering support and their many contributions to the work being recognized through this election.

Thirty years ago, I arrived in the United States to pursue my passion for Biophysical Chemistry and to begin my graduate studies. I feel deeply fortunate to have embarked on this journey, and I am committed to upholding the ideals of the �����Ƶ to “advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.”

[Embedded color image of people associated with Al-Hashimi’s work]

Sincerely,

[signature]

Hashim M Al-Hashimi
Roy and Diana Vagelos Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics
Associate Dean of Biomedical Graduate Education, Columbia University Irving Medical Center

[Letter is written in ink on metal paella pan]

Transcription:

A glorius [sic] day of OCTOBER 11th, 2025

Dear Chair Liu and President Patton,

I accept!!!!

Thank you deeply for the honor.

When I was a boy my dad taught me an important lesson: If more people ever need to be fed, just throw another handful of rice into the pan…..

We can always feed [underline] EVERYONE! [end underline]

Longer tables, [underline] not [end underline] higher walls!!

CHEF JOSÉ ANDRÉS
2025