Projects

The Forum, a collaboration of higher education leaders and scholars, launched in 1984 and moved to the Academy in 2022. The Higher Education Forum is an opportunity for the Academy to provide leadership and learning on pressing issues in higher education with a cross-disciplinary and cross-sector approach that draws on the strengths of its members and Affiliates.

The Commission seeks to reimagine the nation’s political economy, rethink the values that drive economic policy making, and advance recommendations that help individuals, communities, and the nation flourish.

This multi-disciplinary Academy initiative is focused on the urgent global challenge of climate change and recommending meaningful actions to accelerate climate mitigation and adaptation strategies for all Americans.

As the second phase of Meeting the Challenges of the New Nuclear Age, this initiative will explore challenges created by “new” nuclear weapons states, potential proliferators, and de facto nuclear weapons states.

The Academy is bringing together political scientists, legal and security experts, health professionals, and humanitarians to rethink the provision of essential health services in areas of violent conflict.

The Commission on the Arts is a multi-year project with distinguished cochairs, more than $1 million of support from foundations and individuals, and a commitment to exploring the role of the arts in American life, with an emphasis on arts education and infrastructure.

Through Track-2 meetings between U.S., Russian, and Chinese experts, Promoting Dialogue on Arms Control and Disarmament seeks to identify a range of measures to enhance strategic stability among the major nuclear powers and avoid costly arms races.

Challenges for International Scientific Partnerships aims to articulate the benefits of international collaboration and recommend solutions to the most pressing challenges associated with the design and operation of partnerships. This initiative seeks to identify policy recommendations and best practices to mitigate challenges for international science collaborations, including physical facilities, distributed networks, and peer-to-peer partnerships.

The goal of the project is to advance a set of clear, national recommendations for closing the justice gap that currently exists between the demand for legal services and the supply.

The Commission spent two years engaging with communities all over the U.S. to explore how best to respond to the weaknesses and vulnerabilities in our political and civic life. Its final and bipartisan report, Our Common Purpose: Reinventing American Democracy for the 21st Century, was released in June 2020 and includes six strategies and 31 ambitious recommendations to help the nation emerge as a more resilient democracy by 2026, the nation’s 250th anniversary.

Meeting the Challenges of the New Nuclear Age examines some of the possible escalation pathways that could lead one or more nuclear weapons states to use nuclear weapons and aims to articulate a set of recommendations for de-escalating possible nuclear crises mostly involving the United States and its allies.

By convening scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers with representatives of the courts, legal aid providers, and foundations, the project seeks to understand and assess the challenge of providing legal services for low-income Americans.

The Public Face of Science is dedicated to exploring the complex and evolving relationship between scientists and the public. This three-year project engages the expertise of a broad range of leaders in communication, law, humanities, the arts, journalism, public affairs, and the physical, social, and life sciences.

Drawing from national leaders in education, business, and government, this commission analyzed the current state of undergraduate education and offers recommendations to improve the quality of student learning, increase college completion rates, and ensure all students have access to an affordable postsecondary education.

The Commission on Language Learning examined the current state of language education, projected what the nation’s education needs would be in the future, and offered recommendations for ways to meet those needs.

The Academy study on Civil Wars, Violence, and International Responses is driven by the desire to provide new tools for analyzing, responding to, and, where possible, preventing the threats posed by the collapse of state authority associated with civil wars.

New Dilemmas in Ethics, Technology and War is a three-year study exploring the intricate, rapidly evolving relationship between advancements in military technology and the moral and ethical dilemmas that new technologies pose for states, international organizations, and global society. 

Public colleges and universities are key engines of economic growth, innovation, and upward mobility. This project explored strategies to preserve the strength and diversity of institutions of higher education.