What are the lessons learned when community college leaders, researchers, area employers, policymakers and philanthropists get together to discuss how to provide postsecondary students with the skills they need for meaningful employment?

Academy member Denis Feeney has spent the last few years trying to understand why the Romans developed a literature in their Latin language, when the balance of historical probability was against this happening.

Academy projects in Science, Engineering, and Technology seek to strengthen the capacity of science and engineering to improve the human condition. This goal has never been more important for the nation or for the world than it is today. Global challenges increasingly require collaboration across disciplinary, professional, and national boundaries. Likewise, rapid advances in information processing and transmission raise new issues for the management of scientific knowledge and for action on new discoveries.

Ernst Bamberg, Ed Boyden, Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, Gero Miesenböck, and Georg Nagel will receive a storied science prize in recognition of their extraordinary contributions related to the invention and refinement of optogenetics. The Rumford Prize has been awarded previously to Thomas Edison in 1895 for his work in electric lighting; Edwin Land in 1945 for his applications in polarized light and photography; Enrico Fermi in 1953 for his studies of radiation theory and nuclear energy; and Federico Capasso and Alfred Cho in 2015 for their contributions to the field of laser technology.

Historian Bernard Bailyn opened the celebration of the 220th annual meeting of the Academy with a commentary on the personal characteristics of John Adams as revealed in his diary and his autobiography.

David Ellwood and Christopher Jencks discuss how inequalities in race, gender, and income continue to divide American society. Through the 2000–2001 Stated Meeting series on inequalities, the Academy seeks to reevaluate what has been achieved in the past quarter-century and assess the challenges that await us in the future.

Ten business leaders, 252 organizations across the country issue call to action

Projects in Education and the Development of Knowledge examine the vital role that education plays in our nation and the world. Work in this area seeks to inform policy and practice in support of high-quality educational opportunities for all Americans. From advancing equitable educational outcomes to leveraging new developments in the learning sciences and digital technologies to understanding the vital role that public universities play as engines of economic growth, innovation, social mobility, and citizenship, projects in this area draw on scholars and practitioners from diverse fields to provide leadership and actionable solutions to policy-makers, higher education leaders, and philanthropists.

How to improve Congress? An opinion feature in the New York Times highlights bold ideas to make Congress better, including a link to the Academy's report, "The Case for Enlarging the House of Representatives.” The opinion piece and the report explain how expanding Congress would make it more representative, better serve voters, and keep the institution in line with the Founders’ vision.

The 250th anniversary of the United States’ founding is approaching, and the opportunities are huge for museums to reframe history and engage their communities more deeply.

To thwart the skepticism of prospective students, some map job options, offer guarantees.

Public libraries and their grounded, portable and invisible civic infrastructure give us another, better way to relate to ourselves and to each other — not only as consumers, but as citizens.

Academy member James Fallows includes Our Common Purpose as one of three developments that shed light on how the parts of America that still work can be applied to the parts that need help most.

The class speakers at the Induction Ceremony explored several themes, including the value of curiosity and the unexpected; strategies to prevent scientific failures with harmful consequences; the role of the social sciences in addressing the urgent challenges of today; the processes of transformation and translation; and how openness fosters innovative and sustainable problem-solving. The ceremony featured presentations from theoretical astrophysicist Charles F. Gammie, research ecologist Helene Muller-Landau, lawyer and legal scholar Daniel E. Ho, writer and translator Jhumpa Lahiri, and economist and nonprofit leader Cecilia A. Conrad. An edited version of their presentations follows.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, an economic crisis, and a political climate dominated by fear, resentment, and division, the cochairs of the Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship find reason to be optimistic about America’s faith in democracy: the civic heroism of our 2020 election workers.

Rolena Adorno offers an abbreviated version of the remarks she made at the 130th Modern Language Association Annual Convention on January 10, 2015.

On February 13, 2019, Anthony Abraham Jack (Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, Assistant Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and the Shutzer Assistant Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study) spoke at a gathering of Academy Members and guests about his new book, The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges are Failing Disadvantaged Students. The program, which served as the 2078th Stated Meeting of the Academy, included a welcome from David W. Oxtoby (President of the Academy) and an introduction from Bridget Terry Long (Dean of the Faculty of Education and Saris Professor of Education and Economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education). Danielle Allen (James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University and Director of Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics) participated in a conversation with Anthony Jack following his opening remarks. An edited version of his remarks and of his conversation with Danielle Allen appears below.

Free speech makes no distinction about quality; academic freedom does. Are all opinions equally valid in a university classroom? Joan Wallach Scott speaks about academic freedom after accepting the Talcott Parsons Prize.

In this Washington Post column, Danielle Allen - who cochaired the Academy's Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship - proposes that Supreme Court justices "take it upon themselves" to establish term limits, which is a modified approach to a recommendation in the Our Common Purpose report.

Drawing largely on original research using federal data sets and the Gallup-Purdue Index survey of college alumni, the new report from the Humanities Indicators finds that college graduates with degrees from fields with below-average earnings are quite similar to graduates from other fields with respect to their perceived well-being.