Carol Steiker, a 1979 Cheltenham High School graduate and Harvard Law School professor, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellowship of artists, scholars and leaders and a center for independent policy research.

The Academy was established in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, and other founding fathers of the United States.

Steiker was elected to the Social and Behavioral Sciences class and joins a distinguished group of individuals elected to the Academy before her, including George Washington (elected 1781), Benjamin Franklin (1781), Ralph Waldo Emerson (1864), Albert Einstein (1924), Robert Frost (1931), Margaret Mead (1948), Martin Luther King, Jr. (1966), Condoleezza Rice (1997), Sally Field (2013) and Joan Baez (2020).

Steiker serves as the Dean’s Special Advisor for Public Service. She also served as faculty co-director of the Harvard Criminal Justice Policy Program from 2015-2020.

Professor Steiker’s primary interest is in the field of criminal justice with a special focus on issues related to capital punishment. In addition to her scholarship, she has worked pro bono for indigent criminal defendants, including death penalty cases in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Her most recent books, both co-edited with her brother Jordan Steiker, are “Comparative Capital Punishment,” (Edward Elgar 2019) and “Courting Death: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment,” (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2016).

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Photo: Harvard University