Two faculty members from the University of Pennsylvania have been selected for membership in the American Philosophical Society. They are Ronald Fairman and Rogers Smith.

Fairman is the Clyde F. Barker-William Maul Measey Professor of Surgery and chief of vascular surgery and endovascular therapy in Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine. He also serves as vice chairman for clinical affairs for the Department of Surgery and is a professor of surgery in Radiology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

An internationally acclaimed vascular surgeon and currently president of the Society for Vascular Surgery, Fairman has played a central role in shaping a new field of medicine, endovascular therapy, which helps patients afflicted with blood vessel disorders, such as aneurysms and arterial blockages.

His research has advanced less-invasive endovascular surgical procedures and refined the complex devices used during those surgeries.

Rogers Smith is the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science, chair of the Penn Program on Democracy, Citizenship and Constitutionalism and associate dean for social sciences in Penn’s School of Arts and Sciences.

A leading scholar of American public law, American political thought and the politics of citizenship, Smith has explored how American constitutional development has been driven in part by tensions between conflicting American values, especially between rights doctrines and racial, gender and religious conceptions of American identity.

Smith has argued that American constitutionalism and citizenship should be understood as efforts to extend secure possession of basic rights more inclusively in ways that have contributed significantly to debates over civil liberties, immigration and policies shaping opportunities for racial and ethnic minorities.

The American Philosophical Society promotes useful knowledge in the sciences and humanities through excellence in scholarly research, professional meetings, publications, library resources and community outreach. It has played a role in American cultural and intellectual life for over 250 years.