Professor Bernard Haykel has been elected to the American Academy of Sciences and Letters. The Academy “promotes learning and honors outstanding scholarly excellence and intellectual courage in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, mathematics, and engineering, as well as in the arts and the learned professions.” Haykel, whose research lies at the juncture of the intellectual, political, and social history of the Middle East, with particular emphasis on the countries of the Arabian Peninsula, had previously been appointed to the Nelson Mandela Chair in Afro Asian Studies, which is a visiting professorship at Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam, Kerala, India. He has also been a recipient of a Henry Luce Foundation grant to study Muslims in India.