The election of new Academy members in 2021 provides an opportunity to recognize extraordinary people who help solve the world’s most urgent challenges, create meaning through art, and contribute to the common good from every field, discipline, and profession.

For a full and up-to-date listing of upcoming events, please visit amacad.org/events.

As the Academy emerges from this difficult year, we have good news to share as well. Despite the challenges we have faced, our Academy community has remained active and vibrant.

April showers may bring May flowers, but May flowers among archival materials can bring a host of problems.

Academy members are frequently invited on television shows to share their expertise and insights. If you follow the Academy on social media, we share broadcast segments featuring members.

Louis W. Cabot, Chair Emeritus and an active member of the Academy for 63 years, passed away on January 29, 2021, at age 99. He served as Chair of the Board (2010–2013), Chair and founding member of the Academy Trust (2002–2013), and Vice President (2001–2010), as well as a member of numerous governance committees, including the Finance, Development, Investment, and Audit Committees. He is remembered by all who worked with him for his wisdom, boundless energy, skill in running meetings, generosity, optimism, and hearty good cheer.

Select Prizes and Awards to Members

There are several ways members may be involved in the life and work
of the Academy.

A $100 Million Campaign for the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

Dysfunctional immigration policies implemented in recent decades have accelerated growth of the Latino population and racialized its members around the trope of illegality. Until 2016, the cultivation of White resentment relied on a dog-whistle politics of racially coded symbolic language, but with the election of Donald Trump, White nationalist sentiments became explicit.

An engraving above the western entrance to the U.S. Supreme Court proclaims a bold ideal for the American judicial system: “equal justice under law.” Unfortunately, the nation has not yet achieved the Court’s aspiration. While many Americans experience legal issues at some point in their lives, not everyone has access to the legal assistance that they need.

An examination of the financial advantage earning a bachelor’s degree, in any major, provides over not attaining the degree.

Since the release in June 2020 of Our Common Purpose: Re­inventing American Democracy for the 21st Century, the final report of the Academy’s Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizen­ship, there have been a number of surprising and inspiring stories about the impact the report has had. From giving the report away as Valentine’s Day presents to ordering a copy for everyone in the city government of Boise, Idaho, Our Common Purpose has been shared, read, downloaded, viewed, and discussed around the country.

The Academy’s New Haven Program Committee, in partnership with Yale University’s MacMillan Center, hosted a conversation on national and international policies for slowing global warming that featured William Nordhaus (Yale University), recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. The program included remarks from Pinelopi Goldberg (Yale University; formerly, The World Bank Group) and Scott Barrett (Columbia University) as well as introductions from Steven Wilkinson (Yale University) and David Oxtoby (American Academy of Arts & Sciences).

William Labov is regarded as the founder of variationist sociolinguistics, a discipline dedicated to understanding and researching language in relation to social factors that include region, class, and gender. Dr. Labov has worked to promote literacy for speakers of nonstandard dialects and to develop reading and teaching materials for these populations.

The Academy’s Francis Amory Prize recognizes major contributions to the field of reproductive biology and was first awarded in 1940. Over the years, the prize recipients have reflected the increasing complexity and remarkable scientific progress in the field of reproductive biology.

Roger Ferguson, cochair of the Academy’s Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education, addresses how recent crises have exacerbated enduring challenges in higher education and how we collectively address those headwinds will shape outcomes for generations to come.

A new report from the Challenges of International Scientific Partnerships initiative offers principles for successful large-scale projects undertaken across scientific disciplines and national borders.

The Summer 2021 issue of Dædalus on “The Administrative State in the Twenty-First Century: Deconstruction and/or Reconstruction,” guest-edited by Mark Tushnet, features fourteen essays by scholars in the fields of law, political science, public policy, public administration, governance, and ethics on the future of the modern administrative state—the more than two million civilian employees working largely in government agencies and institutions.