New members of American Academy of Sciences and Letters
Alan Charles Kors and Philip E. Tetlock have been invested as members of the American Academy of Sciences and Letters, a nonprofit that promotes scholarship and honors achievement in the arts and sciences.
The nonpartisan Academy provides platforms for academics to share their scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, mathematics, and engineering. It supports early-career scholars, offers public programming, and promotes the ideals of traditional liberal arts.
“Like other academies, we honor intellectual excellence, but our Academy is distinguished by a special accent on intellectual courage,” says Academy President Donald Landry, who is also interim president of the University of Florida. “All our new members this year reflect the independence of mind we strive to honor.”
Alan Charles Kors is the Henry Charles Lea Professor Emeritus of history. He taught in the School of Arts & Sciences at Penn from 1968 to 2017, specializing in European intellectual history of the 17th and 18th centuries. Kors is the author of multiple books and articles on early modern French intellectual history, including a trilogy on the origins of atheism, and was editor-in-chief of the “Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment.” Kors was a recipient of the National Humanities Medal and a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar. He served on the board of governors of The Historical Society and on the Executive Committee of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. At Penn, his teaching earned him both the Lindback Award and the Ira Abrams Memorial Award.
Philip E. Tetlock is the Annenberg University Professor and a Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor with primary appointments in the School of Arts & Sciences and the Wharton School and a secondary appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication. His work explores decision-making, the challenges of assessing “good judgment,” and the criteria that scientists use in judging judgment and drawing conclusions on bias and error. He has published more than 200 articles and written or edited more than 10 books, including “Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction” and “Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?” His awards and honors include receiving the Woodrow Wilson Award for best book on government, politics, or international affairs and being elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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