On April 17, the Academy announced its newly elected members. Existing members were thrilled to welcome new members and affiliated organizations were quick to recognize their members in the 2019 class.

Academy President David Oxtoby speaks at the 2019 Miami Dade College commencement and receives an honorary degree.

The American Academy of Arts & Sciences hosted a distinguished group of judges, attorneys, human rights specialists, and academics to discuss whether an International Anti-Corruption Court (IACC) would contribute to global peace and security and, if so, how it might be established.

This issue of the Bulletin highlights the remarkable breadth of the Academy’s work, describing recent activities in the areas of education, science, international affairs, and the arts. The work detailed in these pages also demonstrates our commitment to core values: elevating the use of evidence and knowledge, embracing diversity and inclusion, and advancing the common good.

It is with sadness that the Academy notes the passing of the following Members.*

Select Prizes and Awards to Members

Jazz: it has been called both cool and hot, earthy and avant-garde, intellectual and primitive. It is improvisational music touted for the freedom it permits its players, but in its heyday was largely composed and tightly arranged. It tells a story about race in America: not only because African American musicians were so central in its creation and African American audiences so important in their creative responses to it, but because whites played such a dominant role in its dissemination through records and performance venues and its ownership as intellectual and artistic property. But is jazz a relic of the past, or does it continue to have meaning and influence for today’s artists and audiences? And while it may still be present, does it still matter?

Much of the attention about the humanities in higher education tends to focus on four-year colleges and universities (and more specifically, on the declining number of students who major in the humanities). In recent years, the American Academy’s Humanities Indicators (HI) have been exploring the growing presence of the humanities in the community college sector.

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.

On March 6, 2019, Douglas E. Soltis and Pamela S. Soltis spoke at the Academy about a project that harnesses algorithm development, computer power, and DNA sequencing to create a comprehensive visual Tree of Life. The program, which served as the 2079th Stated Meeting of the Academy, included a welcome from President David W. Oxtoby and an introduction from Scott Vernon Edwards.

One of the recurring questions the Humanities Indicators receives concerns the extent to which students are engaging with the humanities as undergraduates—a subject for which there is precious little data. The best available information comes from an occasional survey of college graduates, which includes a painstaking review of the college transcripts of a nationally representative sample of college graduates.

Language immersion is needed to help address global challenges, yet U.S. citizens are falling behind. Nicholas B. Dirks, member of the Academy's Commission on Language Learning, offers his commentary.

At an event cosponsored by the American Academy and Resources for the Future about lessons learned from the Clean Air Act, former congressman Henry Waxman is realistic about the obstacles presented by congressional Republicans and the Trump administration.

In 1860, zoologist-geologist Louis Agassiz and botanist Asa Gray, both members of the Harvard faculty, took part in a debate held at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on the recently published Origin of Species.

The Summer 2019 issue of Daedalus, “Inequality as a Multidimensional Process,” guest edited by Michèle Lamont and Paul Pierson, draws on a wide range of expertise to better understand and examine how economic conditions are linked to other social, psychological, political, and cultural processes that can either counteract or reinforce durable inequalities.

Commission cochair Michael S. McPherson and education program director Francesca B. Purcell provide an overview of work by the Academy’s Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education, which offers a national strategy to improve the college student experience.

John Lithgow reflects on the mission of the Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences, which was asked to examine the state of the humanities and the social sciences in our country at this historical moment, to evaluate their importance, and to make recommendations for the future.

What if, by simplifying the courts — and expecting low-income people without representation to make productive use of the do-it-yourself tools available to them — the courts are inadvertently hindering access to justice? Lawyers Colleen Shanahan and Anna Carpenter make the argument in their Daedalus essay on why "Simplified Courts Can’t Solve Inequality."

Science during crisis has distinctive requirements. A rich literature and extensive practical experience in preparing for crises exist, but strategic deployment of scientific expertise and application of scientific information during crisis events must be improved and enhanced.