Liah Greenfeld

August 22, 1954—May 13, 2026

Liah Greenfeld was one of the most original thinkers of our time. Best known for her work on nationalism, she has continually expanded the range of her scholarship—from minds to nations to civilizations—until she formalized her subject as The Science of Humanity. With her prodigious output over a 40-year career, she has presented a framework for a logical and empirical human science, capable of progressively producing objective knowledge about all of human reality.

Greenfeld joined Harvard University in 1985 as an Assistant Professor with a joint appointment at the Department of Sociology and the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies. Four years later, she was promoted to the position of the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of Social Sciences at Harvard University. In 1994, she joined Boston University as a University Professor, holding joint appointments in the Departments of Sociology, Political Science, and Anthropology until her retirement in December 2024. She also held visiting positions at RPI, MIT, the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris, and the Open University, Hong Kong. From 2011 to 2016, she held the position of Distinguished Adjunct Professor at Lingnan University, Hong Kong.