ACLS Welcomes Three New Members to Its Board of Directors

ACLS is pleased to welcome three new members to its Board of Directors. The new board members were elected unanimously on April 24, 2026.

Lizabeth A. Cohen is the Howard Mumford Jones Research Professor of American Studies and Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of History at Harvard University and a past Dean of the Radcliffe Institute. She currently chairs the new ACLS initiative Defending the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (DASSH). Her most recent book, Saving America’s Cities: Ed Logue and the Struggle to Renew Urban America in the Suburban Age (2019), won the 2020 Bancroft Prize. In addition to being a 1993 ACLS Fellow, she is a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Sylvester A. Johnson is Professor of Black Studies at Northwestern University and holds the 2024 Kluge Chair in Technology and Society at the Library of Congress’s Kluge Center. A scholar of race, religion, and technology, he has published award-winning books including The Myth of Ham in Nineteenth-Century American Christianity and African American Religions, 1500–2000. He is a founding co-editor of the Journal of Africana Religions and leads the Henry Luce Foundation–supported project Future Humans, Human Futures, exploring ethical governance and human-machine interaction. In 2022, he served as a member of the Luce/ACLS Working Group on Public Knowledge.

Ayanna Thompson is the Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University and Executive Director of the Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies. She was elected to the British Academy in 2025 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021. Thompson is the author of numerous books, including Blackface and Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America, and has served as dramaturg for Broadway productions including Macbeth, Uncle Vanya, and Romeo + Juliet. She currently serves on the boards of the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and several arts organizations.

In addition to electing its newest members, the ACLS board also re-elected Melani McAlister, Professor of American studies and international affairs at Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, The George Washington University, as Treasurer for a second term; and Frances Daly Fergusson, President Emeritus of Vassar College, also a current member, to the Executive Committee of the board.