He is chairman of the International Advisory Council of the Harvard School of Public Health's AIDS Initiative, and is an honorary trustee and an honorary member of the corporation of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Tempelsman is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and was named a visitor to the Department of Classical Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. A director of the Academy of American Poets, Tempelsman also serves as a trustee of the New York University Institute of Fine Arts, and on Lenox Hill Hospital's Advisory Board. He has served on several Presidential Commissions including the President's Commission for the Observance of Human Rights, the Citizen's Advisory Board of Youth Opportunities and the National Highway Safety Advisory Committee, and was appointed to the New York Council on International Business.