History professor David Weber was recently inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on Oct. 6 at its headquarters in Cambridge, Mass.
Weber has been teaching at SMU since 1976. He is a member of the History Department in the Dedman College of Humanities and Science and an author of over 22 books and 60 scholarly articles. Weber has also taught numerous Latin American, Mexican and Spanish courses.
He is the only faculty member at SMU to be given this honor.
“It is certainly a capstone to a long career,” Weber said, “but I cherish it particularly because it came to me while teaching at SMU.”
According to Weber, SMU has never before appeared on the Academy’s list because most recognition is given to “professors who teach at top tier universities on either coast who are, therefore, more visible to their peers.”
The Academy also requires extensive contribution to one’s field and an excellence in their work. Among to the 4,000 Fellows, there are 160 Nobel winners and 50 Pulitzer Prize Winners.
Webber adds the honor to his list of other achievements. In 2002, Webber earned the Spanish equivalent of a knighthood by King Juan Carlos of Spain. Then in 2005, Mexico named him to the Order of the Aztec Eagle.
For the 2007-2008 school year, Weber is currently at Yale University editing the letters of a young man who traveled with the U.S. team that surveyed the U.S.-Mexican border. He said that he finds his present work fascinating because of its proximity to today’s world.
“It’s hard to imagine from today’s perspective when the border is so crowded,” Weber said, “but the surveyors put very few markers along the border, because they believed it was a desolate place that no one would ever live there.”
