Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Ph.D., director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center and the Elizabeth Ware Packard Professor of Communication at the university’s Annenberg School for Communication, has been elected to a four-year term on the board of directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Jamieson is one of three scholars elected to join the board of directors by the members of the AAAS, the world’s largest general scientific society and the publisher of the Science family of journals. Members also elected Willie May, Ph.D., of Morgan State University, to serve as president-elect of the AAAS and Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis, Ph.D., of the University of Florida, to the board of directors.
“We are thrilled to welcome Willie, Kathleen, and Betty to the AAAS Board,” said Sudip S. Parikh, Ph.D., chief executive officer of the AAAS and executive publisher of the Science family of journals. “Their expertise will be invaluable as we advance scientific excellence, expand who can participate in the STEMM [science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine] ecosystem, address mis- and disinformation, and provide historical context on the scientific enterprise to inform strategic thinking.
“We are confident that these strong leaders will help achieve our vision, especially as we celebrate our 175th anniversary and focus on igniting progress for the next 175 years,” he added.
Jamieson, founding director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) and cofounder of its project FactCheck.org and subsidiary site SciCheck, employs rhetorical analysis, surveys, and experiments to understand campaign communication, the science of science communication, and ways to blunt misinformation and conspiracy theories.
“Understanding how communication functions in society is pivotal to the scientific enterprise and the future of the STEMM workforce,” said Jamieson, who was elected a Fellow of AAAS in 2021. “As long as science and scientists retain their commitment to the norms of transparency and self-critique, science will remain our most reliable source of knowledge and innovation. And I find that fact inspiring.”
In 2020, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) awarded Jamieson its most prestigious award, the Public Welfare Medal, for her “non-partisan crusade to ensure the integrity of facts in public discourse and development of the science of scientific communication to promote public understanding of complex issues.” The following year, she was named to the NAS’s Strategic Council for Research Excellence, Integrity, and Trust.
Jamieson is also program director of The Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands. Since 2015, the National Academies of Sciences, Medicine, and Engineering have cosponsored retreats with Sunnylands and APPC seeking to protect the integrity of science; articulate the ethical principles that should guide scientific practice to ensure that science works at the frontiers of human knowledge in an ethical way; and protect the courts from inadvertent as well as deliberate misstatements about scientific knowledge. Read more about the retreats.
May, the new president-elect of the AAAS, is vice president of research and economic development and professor of chemistry at Morgan State University, Maryland’s largest historically Black university. In addition to electing Jamieson to the board, AAAS members also elected Smocovitis, a professor of the history of science at the University of Florida.
Read the AAAS announcement and learn more about the newly elected leaders.
Read the AAAS member spotlight “Kathleen Jamieson’s Tips for Knocking Misinformation Out of the Ring.”
