The Academy’s new strategic framework presents four animating principles and seven strategies that are designed to ensure that the Academy continues to produce high-quality, interdisciplinary work that addresses urgent societal challenges. In 2025, the Academy’s programmatic work laid the groundwork for new projects and initiatives that will implement this framework and built on ongoing efforts to increase impact and raise the visibility of the institution with external audiences. These audiences include policymakers at the federal, state, and local level; leaders in philanthropy, higher education, nonprofit organizations, and business; scholars and students; advocacy groups; professional groups and practitioners; and the public.
There are three ways in which Academy projects can have impact. One is by informing the debate or discussion. Measures of success in this area include reach (for example, website visits, publication downloads, and hard copies of publications distributed); earned media (such as citations, interviews, and op-eds); use of the project’s work in education or training; citations in legislative activity; references in scholarly publications and in meeting materials; briefings and events with key audiences; and testimonials.
A second way in which projects can be impactful is by supporting advocacy organizations and influential individuals who can advance the recommendations and solutions offered by Academy projects. Indicators of success include convenings that advance a project’s recommendations; advocacy organizations using or citing Academy work in their outreach to policymakers or other decision-makers; and endorsements of Academy recommendations with letters or calls to action.
A third way the Academy seeks to have impact is by helping catalyze the implementation of new policies, practices, programs, or investment. Impact in this area may be difficult to connect to the Academy’s work because it could take years to realize and may be the result of joint efforts by many contributors. Where appropriate, the Academy may be positioned to take a more direct role in incubating or piloting new initiatives or lining up a partner institution to do so.
What follows is an overview of how each program area is approaching impact through both new and ongoing work, along with highlights of project outreach and achievements in 2025.
American Institutions, Society & the Public Good
Throughout 2025 the Academy continued its multiyear effort to advance the ideas and recommendations in its seminal 2020 report, Our Common Purpose: Reinventing American Democracy for the 21st Century (OCP). An important part of these efforts has been to strengthen a network of champion organizations working to advance the ideas in OCP and strengthen American democracy. The Academy convened leaders from these organizations in December 2024 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and again virtually in June 2025 to share strategies for responding to current challenges to American democracy and identify priorities for the Academy’s ongoing work. In a similar vein, the Academy initiated the Local Democracy Working Group and brought local democracy practitioners together in November to examine the unique challenges facing place-based democracy work and identify ways to support a network of civic leaders working at the local level.
In 2025, the Academy released three follow-up publications to OCP. Like previous reports on enlarging the House of Representatives and on setting Supreme Court term limits, these new publications were developed by working groups tasked with offering additional insights and strategies related to the themes and recommendations in OCP. Each report provided new opportunities for outreach. The Academy published an updated version of Habits of Heart and Mind: How to Fortify Civic Culture to meet demand and emphasize the importance of working to rebuild our civic culture in the context of extraordinary changes underway in 2025. The report was the basis of discussion at a July meeting of the Civic Collaboratory, a network of leading civic innovators, hosted by the Academy and Citizen University. It was also the impetus for an event in Phoenix reconvening civic leaders in Arizona to reflect on their work over the past few years and identify new strategies for the current moment. Ben Klutsey (Mercatus Center), a member of the Academy’s Civic Culture Working Group, wrote an op-ed for The Hill highlighting themes from the Habits of Heart and Mind publication.
In October, the Academy released Expanding Representation: Reinventing Congress for the 21st Century, a report from the OCP Working Group on Electoral Systems Design. The report examines how OCP recommendations to move from a winner-take-all structure to a single transferable vote system with multimember districts could introduce a type of proportional representation for the House of Representatives. It makes the case that such a system could reduce negative polarization, boost voter turnout, and increase representation. In September, the Academy convened representatives from organizations focused on electoral and congressional reform to preview the report and, in November, the publication and working group contributors were featured in a public webinar on improving representation in Congress. Outreach plans include briefings with funders, journalists, state policymakers, and civic groups, particularly in states where efforts to implement relevant reforms are underway.
At the end of the year the Academy released Preparing Students for Civic Life: A Guide for Higher Education Leaders, which offers a blueprint for university presidents seeking to instill democratic virtues on their campuses and to prepare students to live as productive democratic citizens. In 2026, the Academy will host convenings and briefings to engage civil society groups working with campuses to spur additional collaboration and distribution of the publication through partner networks. The Academy will also convene leaders from its Affiliates to discuss the blueprint.
Building on a recommendation in Advancing a People-First Economy, a report from the Commission on Reimagining Our Economy, the Academy released a working group paper, Community Partnership Visas: How Immigration Can Boost Local Economies. The Academy launched the publication at an event in May hosted by the American Enterprise Institute. In the months following, the Academy conducted outreach to raise awareness of place-based visa policy and build a cross-ideological coalition of support for the proposal. The Academy’s engagements focused on states where the idea of place-based visas has gained traction, for example, Arizona, Indiana, Missouri, Utah, Ohio, Michigan, and Kentucky, and included briefings with over twenty federal, state, and local policymakers, business groups, and national organizations of municipal leaders.
In January, the Academy held an exploratory meeting to discuss how local anchor institutions, such as colleges, universities and faith-based organizations, can help address challenges in the housing market. The meeting, cochaired by Paula Giddings (Smith College) and Shirley Malcom (American Association for the Advancement of Science), led to an approved new Academy project on the same topic. To gather feedback and guidance on this developing work, the Academey engaged with key state legislators and legislative staff in California to better understand how state and local government are working with local anchor institutions to respond to the shortage of affordable housing.
The Making Justic Accessible project’s final publication, Achieving Civil Justice: A Framework for Collaboration, helped catalyze new funding for one of the organizations featured as a case study. The project was also cited in a report of the District Courts’ Subcommittee of the First Circuit Judicial Council Access to Justice Committee and in a letter from the Chief Judge of the First Circuit to the project cochairs, John Levi (Legal Services Corporation) and Martha Minow (Harvard Law School).
Education
In the face of unprecedented government interference in higher education, Academy President Laurie Patton and American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) President Lynn Pasquerella convened college and university presidents and leaders of scholarly societies. Together, they developed and supported a unified defense of the values and freedoms of higher education and called for a future marked not by conflict but by constructive engagement. More than 650 leaders signed the statement on behalf of their students, faculty, staff, and communities. Media from national press to campus papers covered the statement, including The New York Times, Forbes, Inside Higher Ed, The Hill, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Boston Globe, and the Oregonian.
In June, the Academy held its annual Forum on Higher Education in Aspen, CO. This year’s Forum was framed by the question “Is Higher Education Leadership Possible?” and provided a space for leaders to speak candidly and exchange ideas on how to respond to the pressures and disruptions facing higher education institutions around the country. Panels approached the question through various lenses, including political polarization, technology, career readiness, new financial models, governance, business partnerships, and American national security. More than one hundred higher education experts and leaders attended, including presidents, provosts, and academic deans from a wide range of institutions, including community colleges, liberal arts colleges, minority-serving institutions, state and regional universities, and R1 research universities. The discussion surfaced several ideas for additional convenings and resources that could support leaders of higher education institutions.
The Commission on Opportunities After High School, cochaired by Nancy Cantor (Hunter College), Harrison Keller (University of North Texas), and Bridget Terry Long (Harvard Graduate School of Education), worked in 2025 to align around key messages, strategies and recommendations, and products and resources. The Commission identified target audiences and developed plans for outreach and impact at its meetings in April and October and in the discussions of working groups focused on K-12 education, postsecondary education, and the future of work and society. To better understand barriers and promising solutions for students, the Commission engaged a wide range of key stakeholders in activities that included roundtables and focus groups with employers, state and federal policymakers, philanthropy leaders, and state education associations. The Commission also held listening sessions with students and administrators at Morgan State University, Maryland’s largest HBCU, high school students in Washington, D.C., and students and administrators at three schools in Massachusetts: Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology, Bridgwater State University, and Olin College of Engineering.
Global Security & International Affairs
The Promoting Dialogue on Arms Control and Disarmament project, chaired by Steven Miller (Harvard University), continued its work to foster strategic and Track II dialogues between U.S. and Chinese experts to advance critical concerns related to arms control, nuclear security, and disarmament.
In July, the Academy partnered again with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and Managing the Atom project at Harvard Kennedy School to convene a U.S.-China Track II dialogue in Shanghai and follow-up discussions with experts in Beijing. The American delegation engaged over fifty Chinese experts from the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, China Institutes of International Relations, China Ministry of Foreign Affairs, China Institute of Nuclear Industry Strategy, and two universities in Beijing. Experts from the American delegation briefed staff from the U.S. Embassy in China as well as from the Department of State’s Office of Strategic Stability and Deterrence Affairs and Office of China Coordination on these discussions.
In 2025, the Global Security and International Affairs program area hosted several events to examine promising directions for future work in a very different context for the global security order. These included a meeting in March of the Committee on International Security Studies (CISS) and an exploratory meeting on the future of the laws of armed conflict; a meeting in September, expanding on the Meeting the Challenges of the New Nuclear Age project, entitled “The Future of Nuclear Deterrence”; and an exploratory meeting in December on the future of security studies. These events brought together leading scholars and practitioners from a range of disciplines to identify future research priorities that could inform and influence policy in a rapidly changing world. The discussions offered valuable insights to guide CISS and the Academy in shaping new work in the program area.
The Humanities, Arts & Culture
To provide a clearer picture of the state of the humanities field, the Humanities Indicators project released the results from a new national survey of humanities departments in fourteen humanities and humanities-adjacent disciplines with responses from over two thousand department chairs. It was the fourth department survey from the project since 2008. In addition, the project released a research paper, “From Matriculation to Completion: How Do Humanities Majors Compare?” examining how students move into and out of humanities majors relative to students in other fields.
With these new releases and ongoing updates to the core data, the Humanities Indicators continues to be an important resource for media and scholarly discussions on the state of the humanities. The Indicators were cited this year over forty times in a wide range of media, including the Dallas Morning News, National Review, WGBH, The Hill, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, The Hechinger Report, and The Conversation, and by the Mellon Foundation. The Indicators were also cited in six books published in 2025 and were discussed at the annual meetings of the American Historical Association, the Modern Language Association, the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, and the American Academy of Religion as well as at events with the College Art Association and the MAPS Leadership Institute.
The Academy’s exploratory meeting on “Cultural Spaces and Their Communities,” cochaired by Leah Dickerman (Museum of Modern Art), Oskar Eustis (The Public Theater), and Cynthia Chavez Lamar (Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian), brought together leaders from libraries, museums, the performing arts, private philanthropy, government, and academic research to discuss the common challenges facing cultural institutions and to begin developing practical solutions that the Academy could advance. The Academy organized five virtual roundtables with members and other experts to build on the exploratory discussion and identify ways that the Academy can help cultural organizations to be resilient, communicate their value, and better serve their communities in the years ahead.
Science, Engineering & Technology
The Academy’s project on AI and Mental Health Care, cochaired by Paul Dagum (Applied Cognition), Sherry Glied (NYU Wagner School of Public Service), and Alan Leshner (American Association for the Advancement of Science), released its publication, AI and Mental Health Care: Issues, Challenges, and Opportunities, at a virtual event in December. The Academy reached out to key audiences in advance of the release and found strong interest from policymakers and professional associations in engaging with Academy experts on these timely issues. The Academy received positive feedback on its deliberative, nonpartisan, and cross-sectoral approach to questions of when and how AI should be used in mental health care.
The Academy held meetings with state legislators from Connecticut, Massachusetts, South Carolina, New York, Vermont, and Virginia as well as with several professional organizations interested in the work, including the American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, National Association of Social Workers, Psychological Clinical Science Accreditation System, Association for Psychological Science, American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, and Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences. In addition, the Academy briefed staff at the Bipartisan Policy Center, the National Governors Association, and the National Association of Counties.
Building on the 2024 exploratory meeting on bridging the gap between science and the public, the Academy hosted a series of five virtual roundtables on trust in science in February, March, and April. These discussions brought together more than eighty educators, experts in science, communicators, and philanthropists and helped define priorities for future work focused on urgent needs and high-impact opportunities. Participants gathered to discuss long-standing challenges and identify what lies at the heart of public trust. The conversations were honest and reflective, detailing how scientists and communicators can improve their strategies and methods of engaging with the public. The roundtables were organized around five key topics: misinformation, climate change, civic engagement, scientific enterprise, and science and democracy. The discussions focused on transparency, elitism, public engagement with science, funding deficits, and more. Participants considered how the media, social networks, and political beliefs affect the public’s perception of and trust in science.
Building on a February webinar on “Proposed Cuts to Federal Funding for Science,” the Academy convened seventeen thought leaders in a series of roundtables to reflect on the current landscape of science funding and explore how philanthropy, government, and industry might work together to build a more resilient ecosystem. Examining the science funding crisis will allow the Academy to formulate a long-term blueprint for action aimed at empowering and informing leaders.