Farah Jasmine Griffin among newest members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Farah Jasmine Griffin has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences along with 251 other individuals, including actor Jodie Foster, novelists Barbara Kingsolver and Colson Whitehead, and actor/dancer/singer Rita Moreno. 

The academy is an honorary society that, according to its website, “recognizes and celebrates the excellence of its members and an independent research center convening leaders from across disciplines, professions, and perspectives to address significant challenges.”

The William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature and of African American Studies, Griffin joins colleagues Kellie Jones (2019) and Mabel Wilson (2021) as the Department’s only distinguished members of the academy. Former colleague Bob Gooding Williams, now at Yale University, was also a previous selection.

In July, Griffin was named University Professor, becoming the first member of the Department to be appointed to the honor, which is the highest academic distinction Columbia confers on its faculty. 

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an honorary society “that, according to its website, “recognizes and celebrates the excellence of its members and an independent research center convening leaders from across disciplines, professions, and perspectives to address significant challenges.”

Founded in 1780 by John Adams, John Hancock, and 60 others, it was established to recognize accomplished individuals and engage them in addressing the greatest challenges facing the young republic.

The new class joins Academy members elected before them, including Benjamin Franklin (elected 1781) and Alexander Hamilton (1791) in the eighteenth century; Ralph Waldo Emerson (1864), Maria Mitchell (1848), and Charles Darwin (1874) in the nineteenth; Albert Einstein (1924), Robert Frost (1931), Margaret Mead (1948), Milton Friedman (1959), Martin Luther King, Jr. (1966), and Jacques Derrida (1985) in the twentieth; and, in this century, Madeleine K. Albright (2001), Antonin Scalia (2003), Jennifer Doudna (2003), Esther Duflo (2009), John Legend (2017), Anna Deavere Smith (2019), Salman Rushdie (2022), Xuedong Huang (2023), and José Andrés (2025).

Induction ceremonies for new members will take place in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in October.