The Academy hosted a meeting at the University of California, Los Angeles, on public research universities in the twenty-first century. The speakers included Gene Block, Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, and Kim A. Wilcox.

When the Federal Reserve celebrated its centennial in December 2013, it bore only passing resemblance to the institution created by Democrats, Progressives, and Populists just a century before.

"Witnessing the death and destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina in my hometown of New Orleans a decade ago triggered an obligation to test the utility of all that I have learned in a long career as a public health scientist."

"Early encounters with poverty and harsh conditions played a major role in fueling my research on child maltreatment. I have always preferred addressing complexity over simplicity, and this has led to a multilevel approach in my research."

There was a time before strong leaders, social inequality, and class systems. Coming of age in the 1960s, my motivation was to understand and hopefully help alter the world of unjust and unstable societies. This personal essay summarizes my career as an archaeologist studying the emergence of complex political systems.

On October 8, 2016, 175 new Fellows and 37 new Foreign Honorary Members will be inducted into the American Academy. The Induction weekend is a wonderful occasion for Fellows and Foreign Honorary Members to meet one another, learn about the Academy’s work, and formally celebrate their election to the Academy.

For centuries, humans have sought to enhance their natural appearance and abilities through medicine, surgery, exercise, and education. Today, performance enhancement is most often associated with drugs taken by athletes and college students to improve physical and mental performance.

The humanities face a variety of challenges in higher education, as reflected both in declining numbers of college majors and in openings for new faculty, according to recent findings from the Humanities Indicators.

Guest edited by Archie Brown, the Summer 2016 issue of Dædalus offers insight into the character and quality of effective political leadership.

The Academy hosted a meeting at the University of Chicago on the benefits and risks of nuclear, biological, and information technologies. The speakers included Robert Rosner, James M. Acton, Elisa D. Harris, and Herbert Lin.

On March 30, 2016, the Academy hosted a program on “The Poetry of Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg for Baritone and String Quartet” that featured a presentation by Bonnie Costello and a performance by David Kravitz, baritone, and the Arneis Quartet.

Mark S. Schlissel, Mary Sue Coleman, Patrick Doyle, M. Roy Wilson, and Lou Anna K. Simon participated in a discussion at the University of Michigan about public research universities and their role in serving the public interest in Michigan.

Lassina Zerbo, Rose E. Gottemoeller, Siegfried Hecker, and Robert Rosner participated in a discussion on the prospects for ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and the challenges presented by nuclear testing.

Timothy J. Colton and George Breslauer gave a presentation on “Russia Beyond Putin,” the subject of the upcoming Spring 2017 issue of Dædalus.

"Twenty years ago I set out with a Chinese friend and research partner, Gao Xiaoxian, to seek from elderly women in northwest Chinese villages their memories of socialist collectivization in the 1950s. We wanted to hear from them before advancing age and death silenced their stories."

"In 1956, while working in the summer as a fledgling reporter for the then family-owned Hartford Courant, I persuaded the editors to let me write what turned out to be a seven-part series exposing the extent of housing segregation in 'liberal' Hartford."

When forced to decide between a career in biochemistry or psychology in the spring of 1950, Jerome Kagan chose the latter because of a gnawing puzzlement provoked by the observation that apparently sane people living in the same community held different beliefs about love, honesty, and whom was entitled to respect and whom to scorn.