Three from Penn elected to the American Philosophical Society

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Three Penn faculty members have been elected to the American Philosophical Society (APS) as part of its 2026 cohort. They are Ezekiel J. Emanuel, vice provost for global initiatives and the Diane v.S. Levy and Robert M. Levy University Professor; Elizabeth Magill of Penn Carey Law; and Sophia Rosenfeld, Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History in the School of Arts & Sciences.

Established by Benjamin Franklin in 1743 for “promoting useful knowledge,” APS is the oldest scholarly society in the United States. It upholds Franklin’s spirit of inquiry by offering a platform for the open exchange of ideas. Election to the APS honors exceptional achievements across various disciplines.

Emanuel is a Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor and holds appointments in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy in the Perelman School of Medicine and the Department of Health Care Management in the Wharton School. An oncologist and world leader in health policy and bioethics, he serves as a special adviser to the Director-General of the World Health Organization, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

He was the founding chair of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health, a position he held until August 2011. From 2009 to 2011, he served as special adviser on health policy to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and the National Economic Council, where he was instrumental in drafting the Affordable Care Act. Emanuel is the most widely cited bioethicist in history, with more than 350 publications and 16 authored or edited books.

Magill has been a professor of law since 2002. She was Penn’s ninth president until December 2023. She came to Penn after serving for three years as executive vice president and provost at the University of Virginia, the first woman to hold that position. Prior to that, she was the Richard E. Lang Professor and dean of Stanford Law School for seven years. Before joining Stanford, she was on the faculty at the University of Virginia School of Law for 15 years. Magill’s leadership at UVA and Stanford brought transformative changes to both institutions.

An award-winning scholar of administrative and constitutional law, Magill is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Law Institute. A member of the Board of Trustees of the National Constitution Center, she has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, held a fellowship in the Law and Public Affairs Program at Princeton University, and was the Thomas Jefferson visiting professor at Downing College, Cambridge University.

Rosenfeld is a scholar of European and American intellectual and cultural history. Her specific focus is on the Enlightenment, the trans-Atlantic Age of Revolutions, and the legacy of the 18th century for modern democracy, including probing the intricacies of concepts like truth and choice. At Penn for nearly a decade, Rosenfeld has written four books: “A Revolution in Language: The Problem of Signs in Late Eighteenth-Century France”; “Common Sense: A Political History; Democracy and Truth: A Short History”; and “The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life,” published in 2025 and a finalist for the Cundill History Prize and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

From 2018 to 2021, she served as vice president of the American Historical Association, and in 2022, she held the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the North at the Library of Congress. In 2025, Rosenfeld was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.