President Aounhonored asmember of prestigious society

Northeastern University President Joseph E. Aoun has been elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the oldest and most prestigious learned societies in the United States.

President Aoun, a renowned linguistics scholar and a leading advocate for higher education around the world, has led Northeastern since August 2006. In keeping with an ambitious set of goals, he expanded Northeastern’s global experiential learning programs anchored in co-op. He has also moved Northeastern forward in such key areas as global outreach and research focused on solutions to real-world problems.

Among the awards President Aoun has received are a Doctor of Humane Letters from the American College of Thessaloniki in 2009, a Doctor of Humane Letters from Hebrew Union College in 2007, and a University of Southern California Associates Award for Creativity in Research and Scholarship in 1997. In 2006, he was presented the Chevalier de L’Ordre des Palmes Académiques (Knight of the Order of the Academic Palms) by the French government.

President Aoun serves on the boards of directors of the American Council on Education, the Boston Private Industry Council, Boston World Partnerships, Jobs for Mass., and the New England Council. He serves on the Leadership Council for the Massachusetts Life Sciences Collaborative and as co-chair of the City to City Boston initiative. President Aoun is also a member of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce executive committee, the Massachusetts Business Roundtable and the Massachusetts Math & Science Initiative.

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Cambridge, Mass.–based center for independent policy research, celebrates its 230th anniversary this year. Founded by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin and other scholar-patriots, the academy has over the years elected such “thinkers and doers” as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Albert Einstein, and Winston Churchill.