AAPSS Names Three as 2026 Fellows
The American Academy of Political and Social Science has elected two academics and one journalist as its 2026 fellows. The three – James N. Druckman, Adam Liptak and Robert A. Moffitt – join a body of 175 scholars and practitioners who have been names fellows since the program started in 2000.
The 2026 fellows will be inducted at a ceremony in Washington, DC, in the fall of 2027.
Druckman, theMartin Brewer Anderson Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester,has made seminal contributions to research on political psychology and the public’s understanding of political communication. He has focused on partisan animosity and its measurement, framing effects, the formation of political preferences, and the extent to which citizens’ preferences are expressed in public policy. He is the AAPSS’s 2026 Harold Lasswell Fellow.
Liptak is the chief legal affairs correspondent of The New York Times and host of The Docket, its newsletter on legal developments. His decades-long coverage of the Supreme Court has been praised for its deft translation of legal jargon and social research to accessible prose. He has taught courses on the First Amendment and the Supreme Court at several law schools. Liptak is the 2026 Roger Wilkins Fellow.
Moffitt, the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Economics at Johns Hopkins University, is a labor economist who has made fundamental contributions to research on poverty, inequality, and welfare programs and has applied those findings in public-service roles that guided the implementation of federal programs like the expanded Child Tax Credit. Moffitt is the 2026 Rebecca Blank Fellow.
Addressing the 2026 cadre, AAPSS President Sheldon Danziger acknowledged how “for many years, their rigorous, evidence-based analyses have improved our understanding of the complex effects of public policies and programs at a time when others provide misinformation and disinformation.”

