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NEWS RELEASE
5/22/01
Meredith Alexander, News Service (650) 725-0224; e-mail mfa@stanford.edu
Three professors elected to American Philosophical Society
Three Stanford professors were elected to the American Philosophical Society April 29. The learned society, founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin, selected two faculty members from Stanford's Department of History, David M. Kennedy and James J. Sheehan, and a professor whose research and teaching have spanned several areas of social science, James G. March.
Kennedy, the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning American historian. His book Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War 19291945, published in 1999, earned him that distinction, as well as a Francis Parkman Prize, an Ambassador's Prize and a California Gold Medal for Literature. The historian is often sought out for comments on presidential politics.
A Stanford undergraduate who received his doctorate from Yale, Kennedy has taught at Stanford since 1967. His interdisciplinary work combines American social and political history with economic and cultural analysis. His 1970 book, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger, was a pioneering study in women's history. In 1980, Kennedy published Over Here: The First World War and American Society, an examination of early-20th century U.S. history and involvement in World War I. That book was a finalist for the Pulitzer.
Sheehan, the Dickason Professor in the Humanities, approaches the past from a different angle: As a professor of modern European history, his focus is on the social, political and cultural history of 18th- and 19th-century Germany.
Sheehan was an undergraduate at Stanford and went on to get a doctorate from the University of California-Berkeley. He taught at Northwestern University until returning to Stanford as a professor in 1979.
His most recent book, Museums in the German Art World from the End of the Old Regime to the Rise of Modernism, which appeared last year, is an exploration of the relationship between aesthetic ideas, institutions and museum architecture in Germany. Sheehan also authored German Liberalism in the 19th Century in 1978 and German History, 17701866 in 1989. In 1998, Sheehan received the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his work in German history.
March's scholarship has bridged a remarkable number of academic fields. He holds several emeritus roles: as Jack Steele Parker Professor of International Management in the Graduate School of Business, and as professor of education, of political science and of sociology. March's studies center on the behavior of organizations, and recently he has focused on universities.
He received his doctorate in political science from Yale in 1953, going on to teach at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and later becoming dean of the School of Social Science at the University of California-Irvine. March came to Stanford in 1969. His most recent books are Democratic Governance and A Primer on Decision Making. In 1958, March published Organizations, a landmark in the field of organizational research an area that spans as many disciplines as March does.
March is director of the Scandinavian Consortium for Organizational Research (SCANCOR) at Stanford. He has been recognized by numerous Scandinavian governments and learned societies and was named a Knight, First Class, of the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit in 1995 and a Commander of the Order of the Lion of Finland in 2000 in honor of his research and work with SCANCOR.
The American Philosophical Society has 728 elected members from the United States. This year, it chose a total of 38 new American members.
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By Meredith Alexander