Jonathan Fanton

Jonathan F. Fanton is president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He served as interim director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College from 2009 to 2014. He previously was president of The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation from 1999 to 2009, and for seventeen years was president of The New School for Social Research. Earlier, he was vice president of planning at The University of Chicago. He taught at Yale University and was special assistant to President Kingman Brewster. He is past chair of Human Rights Watch, Security Council Report, The Union Square Local Development Corporation, and The Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in New York, and was also a trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation. He is currently chair of Scholars At Risk and on the board of the Asian Cultural Council. He is the author of Foundations and Civil Society, volumes I and II (2008), and The University and Civil Society, volumes I and II (1995, 2002). He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1999.