ACLS Elects Edward E. Cohen and James Q. Whitman to Its Board of Directors

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) is pleased to welcome Edward E. Cohen G’64, F’65, economic historian and lawyer, and James Q. Whitman, Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale University, to its Board of Directors. The new board members were elected as part of the 2025 ACLS Annual Meeting in Cambridge, MA, April 24-25, 2025.

Edward E. Cohen is an economic historian specializing in the economy and society of classical Athens and of imperial Rome. He holds doctorates in ancient history from Princeton University and in law from University of Pennsylvania. He received an ACLS Grant-in-Aid in 1964 and an ACLS Study Fellowship the following year. Since 1995, he has been an adjunct Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Pennsylvania. Cohen has led major enterprises in energy, real estate, and banking.

James Q. Whitman is Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale University.  He holds a PhD in Intellectual History from the University of Chicago, and earned his BA and JD from Yale University. Before beginning his teaching career, he was a judicial clerk on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Whitman is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an Honorary Fellow of the American Society for Legal History, a member of the Académie Internationale de Droit Comparé, and a 2010 Guggenheim Fellow.