The American Academy of Political and Social Science (AAPSS) was founded in 1889 to promote progress in the social sciences. Sparked by Professor Edmund J. James and drawing from members of the faculty of the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

, Swarthmore College, and

Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr College ( ; Welsh: ) is a women's liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Founded as a Quaker institution in 1885, Bryn Mawr is one of the Seven Sister colleges, a group of elite, historically women's colleges in the United ...

, the Academy sought to establish communication between ''scientific thought and practical effort''. The goal of its founders was to foster, across disciplines, important questions in the realm of

social sciences Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of so ...

, and to promote the work of those whose research aimed to address important

social problems A social issue is a problem that affects many people within a society. It is a group of common problems in present-day society and ones that many people strive to solve. It is often the consequence of factors extending beyond an individual's cont ...

. Today the AAPSS is headquartered at the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

and aims to offer interdisciplinary perspectives on important social issues.

Establishment

The primary modes of the Academy's communication were to be the bimonthly journal, ''The Annals'', annual meetings, symposia, and special publications. Difficult topics were not avoided. The 1901 annual meeting was on race relations in America, and included a paper by

Booker T. Washington Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856November 14, 1915) was an American educator, author, orator, and adviser to several presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African-American c ...

. The Academy began as a membership organization. Membership was ''open and inclusive'' with an emphasis on educated professionals; even from its establishment, women were permitted to obtain membership. The Academy's members have included not only

academicians An academician is a full member of an artistic, literary, engineering, or scientific academy. In many countries, it is an honorific title used to denote a full member of an academy that has a strong influence on national scientific life. In syst ...

, but also distinguished

public servants The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...

such as

Herbert Hoover Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was an American politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 and a member of the Republican Party, holding office during the onset of the Gr ...

and Frances Perkins. Perhaps for this reason, it is not a member of the American Council of Learned Societies. In 2000 the Academy began selecting and installing ''Fellows'' in recognition of social scientists who have made outstanding contributions to the field.Pearson, Robert W. (2003) "A New Look at The American Academy of Political and Social Science" ''Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science'' 585(Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century): pp. 6-7, p.7 Since 2008 the Academy has presented an annual Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize to recognize public officials and/or scholars who have used social science and informed judgment to advance the public good. The Academy continues to publish its bimonthly journal, and holds congressional briefings, special conferences, and biannual meetings of its board of directors. The Academy has moved away from the membership model, however.

Presidents of the Academy

* 1889–1895 - Edmund J. James * 1896–1900 - Roland P. Falkner (acting in the absence of Edmund J. James) * 1900–1902 - Samuel McCune Lindsay * 1902–1929 - Leo S. Rowe * 1930–1952 - Ernest M. Patterson * 1953–1970 - James C. Charlesworth * 1970–1972 - Richard D. Lambert * 1972–1998 - Marvin E. Wolfgang * 1998–1999 -

Kathleen Hall Jamieson Kathleen Hall Jamieson (born November 24, 1946) is an American professor of communication and the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. She co-founded FactCheck.org, and she is an author, most recently ...

* 1999–2001 -

Jaroslav Pelikan Jaroslav Jan Pelikan Jr. (December 17, 1923 – May 13, 2006) was an American scholar of the history of Christianity, Christian theology, and medieval intellectual history at Yale University. Early years Jaroslav Jan Pelikan Jr. was born on Dec ...

* 2001–2005 -

Lawrence W. Sherman Lawrence W. Sherman (born October 25, 1949) is an American experimental criminologist and police educator who is the founder of evidence-based policing. Sherman's use of randomized controlled experiments to study deterrence and crime prevention ...

* 2006–2015 - Douglas S. Massey * 2015–2021 -

Kenneth Prewitt Kenneth Prewitt (born March 16, 1936) is the Carnegie Professor of Social Affairs at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, where he is also director of the Scholarly Knowledge Project. He was Director of the United Stat ...

*2021–present

Marta Tienda Marta Tienda is an American sociologist. From 1997 to 2001, she served as the director of the Office of Population Research at Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in ...

Publications

''The Annals''

''The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science'', a policy and scientific journal in political and social science, began publication in July 1890 and has continued uninterrupted up until the present."Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science," in International Magazine Co., ''Periodicals,'' vol. 1, no. 1 (October–December 1917), pg. 5. The journal began as a quarterly but switched to a bi-monthly schedule effective with volume 2 in the summer of 1891. From 1897 (volume 6), volume numbers began to be changed every three issues, with each single issue after volume 38 constituting its own volume. A number of pamphlet supplements were also issued during the journal's early years. ''The Annals'' recent authors and editors have included

Henry Louis Gates Jr. Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. (born September 16, 1950) is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker, who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African A ...

, Richard A. Clarke,

Joseph S. Nye, Jr. Joseph Samuel Nye Jr. (born January 19, 1937) is an American political scientist. He and Robert Keohane co-founded the international relations theory of neoliberalism, which they developed in their 1977 book ''Power and Interdependence''. Togethe ...

, and

William Julius Wilson William Julius Wilson (born December 20, 1935) is an American sociologist. He is a professor at Harvard University and author of works on urban sociology, race and class issues. Laureate of the National Medal of Science, he served as the 80th P ...

. ''The Annals'' has been published by

SAGE Publications SAGE Publishing, formerly SAGE Publications, is an American independent publishing company founded in 1965 in New York by Sara Miller McCune and now based in Newbury Park, California. It publishes more than 1,000 journals, more than 800 books ...

since 1981. In 2003, it changed from its traditional plain orange cover to a more graphic cover containing photographs. ''The Annals'' has covered topics including "The World's Food" (November, 1917) to "The Motion Picture and its Economic and Social Aspects" (November 1926), "Women in the Modern World" (May, 1929), "America and Japan" (May, 1941), "Urban Renewal Goals and Standards" (March, 1964), and "The Global Refugee Problem" (May, 1982). More recent volumes have focused on such topics as "Confronting the Specter of Nuclear Terrorism" and "The Moynihan Report Revisited: Lessons and Reflections after Four Decades". According to the ''

Journal Citation Reports ''Journal Citation Reports'' (''JCR'') is an annual publicationby Clarivate Analytics (previously the intellectual property of Thomson Reuters). It has been integrated with the Web of Science and is accessed from the Web of Science-Core Collec ...

'', the journal has a 2017

impact factor The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as ...

of 2.401, ranking it 33rd out of 169 journals in the category "Political Science" and 11th out of 94 journals in the category "Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary".

Editors

* 1890–1895, Edmund J. James * 1896–1900, Roland P. Falkner * Jan. 1901–Mar. 1902,

Henry Rogers Seager Henry Rogers Seager (July 21, 1870 – August 23, 1930, Kiev, Russia) was an American economist, and Professor of Political Economy at Columbia University, who served as president of the American Association for Labor Legislation. Inspired by t ...

* May 1902–Sept. 1914, Emory R. Johnson * Nov. 1914–July 1929, Clyde L. King * Sept. 1929–July 1968,

Thorsten Sellin Johan Thorsten Sellin (26 October 1896 – 17 September 1994) was a Swedish American sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, a penologist and one of the pioneers of scientific criminology. Biography Sellin was born in Örnsköldsvik in ...

* Jan. 1969–Nov. 1995 Richard D. Lambert * Jan. 1996–Nov. 2003 Alan W. Heston * Jan 2003–May 2006 Robert W. Pearson * July 2006–Dec. 2010 Phyllis Kaniss * Dec. 2010-Dec. 2011 Emily Wood * Dec. 2011–present Thomas A. Kecskemethy

The Academy Online

In 2006, the Academy created a blog to take advantage of the Internet to provide a forum for ideas and research in the

. Today, the Academy'
website
is the main source for news of the Academy, recently published Annals volumes, and information about the Fellows and Moynihan Prize.

Moynihan Prize Winners

* 2008 -

Alice M. Rivlin Alice Mitchell Rivlin (born Georgianna Alice Mitchell; March 4, 1931 – May 14, 2019) was an American economist and budget official. She served as the 16th Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve from 1996 to 1999. Before her appointment at the F ...

* 2009 -

David T. Ellwood David T. Ellwood is an American economist and university administrator. He served as the dean of Harvard Kennedy School and as the Scott M. Black Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University. Early life Ellwood grew up Minnesota. His fathe ...

* 2010 -

Robert Greenstein Robert Greenstein (born 1946) is founder and former president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a Washington, D.C. think tank that focuses on federal and state fiscal policy and public programs that affect low and moderate-incom ...

* 2011 -

Diane Ravitch Diane Silvers Ravitch (born July 1, 1938) is a historian of education, an educational policy analyst, and a research professor at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Previously, she was a U.S. A ...

* 2012 -

Paul Volcker Paul Adolph Volcker Jr. (September 5, 1927 – December 8, 2019) was an American economist who served as the 12th chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1979 to 1987. During his tenure as chairman, Volcker was widely credited with having ended the ...

* 2013 -

* 2014 -

Joseph Stiglitz Joseph Eugene Stiglitz (; born February 9, 1943) is an American New Keynesian economist, a public policy analyst, and a full professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the Joh ...

* 2015 - Rebecca M. Blank * 2016 -

Isabel Sawhill Isabel Van Devanter Sawhill is a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, where she formerly held the position of vice president and director of Economic Studies, among other duties. She has authored or co-authored many books, including ''Gene ...

and Ron Haskins * 2017 -

Alan Krueger Alan Bennett Krueger (September 17, 1960 – March 16, 2019) was an American economist who was the James Madison Professor of Political Economy at Princeton University and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He served ...

* 2018 -

John Holdren John Paul Holdren (born in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, March 1, 1944) is an American scientist who served as the senior advisor to President Barack Obama on science and technology issues through his roles as Assistant to the President for Science and ...

* 2019 -

Samantha Power Samantha Jane Power (born September 21, 1970) is an American journalist, diplomat and government official who is currently serving as the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development. She previously served as the 28th ...

*2020 -

William Nordhaus William Dawbney Nordhaus (born May 31, 1941) is an American economist, a Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University, best known for his work in economic modeling and climate change, and one of the 2 recipients of the 2018 Nobel Memoria ...

Notes

External links

''American Academy of Political and Social Science'' official website
{{Authority control Sociological organizations Academic organizations based in the United States Non-profit organizations based in Pennsylvania 1889 establishments in Pennsylvania Organizations established in 1889 Political science in the United States