Professor Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
G. Mitu Gulati Joins 9 Other UVA Law Faculty in History-Filled Academy
University of Virginia School of Law professor G. Mitu Gulati has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the organization announced on Wednesday.
The academy is an honorary society and research center that dates back to the American Revolution and has inducted luminaries who include the Founding Fathers, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King Jr., Georgia O’Keeffe and Willa Cather.
Noting the month of the announcement, Gulati, who was in India when he heard the news, said simply, “I’m still not convinced this is not an elaborate April Fools’ Day joke.”
Retired UVA faculty member Cora Diamond, University Professor Emerita and the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor Emerita of Philosophy, was also elected to the academy. Diamond held a joint appointment at the Law School in addition to the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences before she retired.
Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences elects members “who discover and advance knowledge and those who apply knowledge to the problems of society,” according to the organization’s website. Members join with other experts to produce nonpartisan interdisciplinary studies “that inform public policy and advance the public good.”
Gulati, whose work focuses on how to help countries in financial distress, is the 10th current UVA Law faculty member to be elected to the academy, and joins a new class that includes scientists, artists, philanthropists and philosophers. George Clooney, columnist Jamelle Bouie from The New York Times (a 2009 UVA graduate), author Jhumpa Lahiri and Apple CEO Tim Cook are all among Gulati’s fellow inductees.
Calling Gulati a “true public intellectual,” Dean Risa Goluboff said, “Mitu’s vast and incisive body of legal scholarship has contributed enormously to contemporary thinking on international finance, sovereign debt and contract law. Not only that, but he regularly offers his expertise and advice to governments facing challenging financial situations in real time — he is the one they call.”
A graduate of the University of Chicago, Yale University and Harvard Law School, Gulati has written more than 200 scholarly articles and has edited or authored 10 books, including, most recently, “European Financial Infrastructure in the Face of New Challenges and Judges on Judicial Institutions and Behavior.”
In addition to advising national governments, he frequently volunteers his time to international governing bodies on matters relating to the global sovereign debt market and how to stabilize the financial markets of countries in crisis.
Gulati engages with the public as the host of the “Clauses & Controversies” podcast, a contributor to the Creditslips.org blog, and a frequent writer for media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, the Financial Times and The Washington Post.
Gulati has also written on topics as wide-ranging as commercial boilerplate, issues in mergers and acquisitions contracts, municipal debt, judges and how they judge, the Supreme Court and the impact of the COVID pandemic on the global financial system.
“Mitu has an active mind and a deep commitment to collaboration,” Goluboff said. “He has co-authors in so many fields because he engages with so many different kinds of questions. We are delighted to have him as a colleague here at UVA and are so pleased that his work is being recognized by the academy.”
Gulati joined the UVA Law faculty in 2021, where he is the Perre Bowen Professor of Law and the John V. Ray Research Professor of Law. He was previously on the faculties of Duke Law School, UCLA Law School and the Georgetown University Law Center.
The earliest members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences include founders John Adams, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton, among many others. The academy maintains a collection of acceptance letters from its inductees.
Alexander Hamilton’s letter said in part, “I entertain too high and respectful opinion of that Society not to esteem myself particularly flattered by so honorable a mark of their distinction.”
New members will be inducted in ceremonies scheduled for September in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Nine other resident UVA Law faculty members are academy members:
Founded in 1819, the University of Virginia School of Law is the second-oldest continuously operating law school in the nation. Consistently ranked among the top law schools, Virginia is a world-renowned training ground for distinguished lawyers and public servants, instilling in them a commitment to leadership, integrity and community service.
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