Bernard Boxill, Pardue Professor Emeritus of Philosophy in the College of Arts & Sciences, was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on April 18.
Boxill joins 213 newly elected members from 125 institutions. Founded in 1780, the academy honors exceptional scholars, leaders, artists and innovators and engages them in sharing knowledge and addressing challenges facing the world.
The 2018 class includes actor Tom Hanks, Netflix CEO W. Reed Hastings, Jr., Librarian of Congress Carla D. Hayden, 44th President of the United States Barack H. Obama, NASA climatologist Claire L. Parkinson, Supreme Court Justice Sonia M. Sotomayor, and more.
The academy’s projects and publications generate ideas and offer recommendations to advance the public good in the arts, citizenship, education, energy, government, the humanities, international relations, science and more.
Boxill’s areas of research focus are in social and political philosophy and African American philosophy. He is the author, among other publications, of Blacks and Social Justice (1984), is editor of Race and Racism (2001), and is currently finishing A History of African American Political Thought: From Martin Delany to the Present.
He received the 2017 Benjamin E. Lippincott Award from the American Political Science association for “a work of exceptional quality by a living political theorist that is still considered significant at least 15 years since the original state of publication.” The award citation calls Blacks and Social Justice “an exceptional work of deep and careful reflection … an indispensable source on the major racial issues of our time and an enduring model for how to combine rigorous theoretical argument with clear-eyed analysis of real-world controversies.” The American Philosophical Association held a symposium on the book in 1984.
In 2015, Boxill won the University’s Distinguished Teaching Award for Post-Baccalaureate Instruction in honor of his extraordinary work with graduate students, and he won a Tanner Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 2003. He served as a fellow of the National Humanities Center from 1985-1986. He is included in the book African-American Philosophers: 17 Conversations (1998), edited by George Yancy.
The new class of members will be inducted in the academy at a ceremony in October 2018 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.