Key Reporter

Shortlisted for ΦBK’s 2025 Award in Science Long before the advent of modern neuroscience, philosophers and theologians alike wrestled with the nature of the mind, and few questions have proved more enduring than those of existence. Who are we, why are we conscious, and what purpose does our consciousness serve? What does it mean to be? Christof Koch, one of the pioneers of consciousness studies, offers a fresh perspective in his sixth and latest book, Then I Am Myself the World.

This December, The Phi Beta Kappa Society will mark 250 years since five students at the College of William & Mary founded a society built on the conviction: love of learning is the guide of life. That conviction has shaped a membership of more than 700,000, including 17 U.S. presidents, 42 Supreme Court justices, and more than 150 Nobel laureates. Phi Beta Kappa’s 10th Secretary and CEO, Frederick M.

Allison Grenda, a Ph.D. candidate in the History of Art at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, received the 2026 Mary Isabel Sibley Fellowship for exceptional young scholars in the field of Greek language, literature, history, or archaeology. Grenda graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, Los Angeles, and earned her master’s degree from the University of California, Davis.

Shortlisted for ΦBK’s 2025 Christian Gauss Award For nearly 70 years, the Village Voice has dished out acclaim, disdain, outrage, and on-the-ground reporting—whatever the New York City paper considered news, whether or not it was fit to print. Aptly, The Freaks Came Out to Write, Tricia Romano’s oral history of the Voice, is a raucous symphony of reporters’ recollections.

Felipe De Brigard of Duke University and Sarah Robins (ΦBK, Hendrix College) of Purdue University have been named recipients of the 2026 Dr. Martin R. Lebowitz and Eve Lewellis Lebowitz Prize for Philosophical Achievement and Contribution. Their proposed symposium topic, “The Distinctiveness of Memory,” centers on a fundamental question at the intersection of philosophy and cognitive science: What, if anything, distinguishes memory from other cognitive capacities?

Unusually, when I first received Mahreen Sohail’s collection of short stories, Small Scale Sinners, I turned to the last paragraph. It was such a poignant wording of the immigrant experience, so beautifully written, I was moved to share it with others. A young friend who had just returned to Italy after her annual visit to her mother in the States became teary upon reading the passage. Such is the power of Sohail’s book, which won the 2026 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

Tomás R. Jiménez, Joan B. Ford Professor of Sociology at Stanford University and founding director of Stanford’s Institute for Advancing Just Societies, is one of 13 preeminent scholars in the arts and sciences selected to serve as a ΦBK Visiting Scholar during the 2026–2027 academic year. Professor Jiménez’s research and writing focus on immigration, public policy, assimilation, social mobility, and ethnic and racial identity.

Behind every consequential policy decision is someone capable of turning ideas into action. For Phi Beta Kappa members on Capitol Hill, that work is grounded in an arts and sciences education that equips them to ask better questions, weigh competing perspectives, and navigate complex challenges. This summer, Phi Beta Kappa brought those experiences directly to the next generation of congressional professionals with generous support from the Gray Foundation.

As Phi Beta Kappamarks the 250th anniversary of our founding on December 5, 1776, we look to our beginnings for the values that will help shape our future. A love of learning and a commitment to thoughtful inquiry guided our start, providing a foundation for grappling with the questions that will define the years ahead. Few are more pressing or consequential than those surrounding artificial intelligence (AI). The possible repercussions of artificial intelligence are attracting massive attention.

Daniel Okrent. Yale University Press, 2026. 297 pages. $35.00. With such groundbreaking productions as Company, Follies, Sunday in the Park With George and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, the composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim achieved a position of dominance in American musical theater.