dwight a. mcbride, president of the new school, elected to american academy of arts & sciences

New York, May 4, 2022 - The New School is pleased to announce that Dwight A. McBride, President of the university, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Founded in 1780, the Academy honors excellence and convenes leaders to examine new ideas, address issues of importance to the nation and the world, and advance the public good.

The announcement was made by Academy President David W. Oxtoby and Chair of the Board of Directors Nancy C. Andrews. The 261 new members in 2022 include artists, scholars, scientists, and leaders in the public, non-profit, and private sectors. The complete list is available here. 

“We are celebrating a depth of achievements in a breadth of areas,” said David Oxtoby, President of the American Academy. “These individuals excel in ways that excite us and inspire us at a time when recognizing excellence, commending expertise, and working toward the common good is absolutely essential to realizing a better future.”

“The Academy was founded on the belief that the new republic should honor truly accomplished individuals and engage them in meaningful work,” said Nancy C. Andrews, Chair of the Academy’s Board of Directors. “The Academy’s dual mission continues to this day. Membership is an honor, and also an opportunity to shape ideas and influence policy in areas as diverse as the arts, democracy, education, global affairs, and science.”

​​The artists, scholars, scientists, and leaders in the public, non-profit, and private sectors elected to the Academy this year join a distinguished group of individuals elected to the Academy 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), Stephen Hawking (1984), and Condoleezza Rice (1997) in the twentieth; and more recently Jennifer Doudna (2003), Bryan Stevenson (2014), M. Temple Grandin (2016), John Legend (2017), Viet Thanh Nguyen (2018), James Fallows (2019), Joan Baez (2020), and Sanjay Gupta (2021).

In accepting his election, President McBride shared: “I’m mindful of the contributions of those committed to the life of the mind. The scientists, artists, and thinkers who rush not to easy answers but to sustained reflection; the coalition of those who push not for quick affirmations but instead probe the doubts that trouble science; the union of seekers who skip the easy succor of soundbites fueling a 24-hour news cycle and dwell instead over the problems that plague our species and threaten our planet; the alliance of those who resist the basic binary of enemies and allies and foster instead empathy and compassion amongst all humankind. In short, these are the brave ones providing bold leadership in a time when our society needs it so desperately. I am honored to be counted among their esteemed company.”