In January I had the opportunity to travel to London to participate in the continuation of one of the Academy’s longest institutional relationships: our shared pursuit of knowledge with the Royal Society, the oldest scientific society in existence. The first interaction between our two societies occurred in 1785, when Royal Society member Benjamin Gale contributed to the first volume of the Academy’s Memoirs. A few years later, in 1788, Royal Society President Sir Joseph Banks was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the Academy.
As you will see in the pages that follow, what brought our two societies together on this occasion, nearly two hundred and fifty years later, was a convening of scholars, leaders, and policymakers to address a question at the front of many of our minds: What is the future of knowledge creation in this era of social, political, and technological disruption? And how can scholars—the creators of knowledge—maintain ties between countries when traditional political, economic, and diplomatic relationships are threatened?
Over the course of two days at the Royal Society’s headquarters in London, we explored the concept of knowledge diplomacy, the process of building and strengthening relations between and among countries through international higher education, research, and innovation. Participants exchanged views on how knowledge diplomacy can help clarify the role of expertise, strengthen the foundations of knowledge exchange and public reasoning, rebuild trust, and restore the crucial role of knowledge as a public good in service to society. I came away from the meeting with a deeper appreciation of the many dimensions in which knowledge is under threat today, including through reductions in funding, the loss of data, reductions in future data collection, the decline in publicly motivated knowledge, and counternarratives about expert consensus.
This edition of the Bulletin explores a number of other ways that the Academy has been addressing the question of knowledge creation in uncertain and disrupted times. In November, the Academy’s Berkeley Committee hosted an event to increase understanding of generative AI technologies, the recent lawsuits challenging their legality, and the implications for the legal system and the economy. In San Diego in January, the Academy’s local committee partnered with the San Diego Natural History Museum to host a lively discussion on the question of “Why Does Science Matter?”—both today and in the future.
At the Academy’s headquarters in Cambridge, we partnered with the Open Research Community Accelerator (ORCA) to convene an important meeting on modernizing tenure, asking the question, “how can we modernize academic reward systems to ensure a vibrant pipeline of new scholars, and better align research practices with institutional missions and the public good?” In another meeting at the Academy, we convened scholars, practitioners, journalists, and policymakers to assess the current state and future of security studies, a field being challenged by rapid shifts in global power dynamics, nontraditional threats, and emerging technologies. And in December we hosted a special convening—the first of its kind at the Academy—with representatives from community colleges to focus on enhancing skills development and employment outcomes for postsecondary students.
As I reflect on all of this activity, I am reminded of our January meeting in London and the imperative that emerged: to counter the threats we face in this turbulent era, we must recommit ourselves to using our networks—intellectual, social, economic, and political—to defend and reestablish the free creation and preservation of knowledge. We ourselves need to become knowledge diplomats—developing, recording, and sharing narratives about why and how we create knowledge, and the human lives that are improved as a result.
I hope you will enjoy the stories contained in this edition of the Bulletin, and I thank you for the stories that you as an Academy member continue to create through your life and work.
Yours cordially,
Laurie L. Patton