Colleges and universities across the country are pushing a simple message: majoring in the humanities pays off in the job market.

Miranda Restovic and Sarah DeBacher of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities describes their organization’s efforts to bring rich, humanities-focused educational experiences to preschoolers, thereby expanding the traditional understanding of what a humanities organization does—and for whom.

From the Archives

From the Archives

Amplifying a recommendation in Our Common Purpose, this OpEd in The Washington Post by Yuval Levin and Lee Drutman proposes expanding the U.S. House of Representatives.

Scott Russell Sanders discusses writing as discovery for the Bulletin’s new feature, “On the Professions”

July 2020 to June 2021 marked the most successful fundraising year in the Academy’s long history, with more than 1,200 donors contributing over $21 million. Over the course of the year, we celebrated the largest gift to the Academy on record, benefited from the most grant funding received in a single year from foundations, and together achieved a new high-water mark for the Annual Fund with over $2.1 million raised. At the close of the year, the Campaign for the Academy & Its Future had reached over 85 percent of its $100 million goal. On behalf of the Academy’s governance bodies and leadership team, we extend our sincere appreciation to all those who contributed to this remarkable outcome.

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.

By Kimberlee Eberle-Sudré, Program Director of Education and the Development of Knowledge at the Academy

Among the 31 recommendations in the Academy's cross-partisan publication, Our Common Purpose, was a proposal to enlarge the House of Representatives to ensure better and more responsive representation for Americans across the country. The idea was explored in a "Vox, America Explained" video which featured the Academy's work.

PBS and the Academy are partnering for a PBS AMERICAN PORTRAIT storytelling project to develop a crowdsourced poem curated by Academy member and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey.

Stephen Heintz, cochair of the Academy’s Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship, says Biden’s single most important step in his first 100 days is to establish a White House Office for Democracy.

Over the past eighteen months, the Academy has partnered with the Northeast Document Conservation Center to repair, clean, and digitize six bound volumes of letters and other documents related to early Academy member and donor Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford) and his daughter, Sarah.

Commentary in the Berkshire Eagle by Binyamin Appelbaum, a member of the New York Times's editorial board, considers ways to address the power possessed by the owners of social media sites. Options presented include a recommendation for a public-interest mandate from the Academy's Our Common Purpose report.

In an article published in The Independent Ledger in Boston on February 26, 1781, the Academy wrote that “they request the Assistance of the Ingenious in every profession. Observations in Astronomy and Geography, will be of great use. Meteorological Observations and Experiments are much wanted.” By May 1781, the Academy had organized its activity into “subjects of study,” instructing that the “seventh class make meteorology their special object, observe the azimuth, meridional height, vertical direction and various phenomena of the Aurora borealis. . . .”

Harold Varmus, Susan R. Wente, Tania Baker, and Mark C. Fishman participated in a conference on ensuring the stability of the biomedical research enterprise in the United States. Richard H. Brodhead introduced the panel discussion, which was moderated by Nancy C. Andrews and Sally Kornbluth.

On October 24, 2024, the Academy’s San Diego Committee hosted a program on “Health and Our Oceans,” which featured atmospheric chemist and Academy member Kimberly A. Prather. Professor Prather discussed newly identified critical connections between rising pollution levels in coastal oceans and rivers and their far-reaching impacts on air quality and human health. She also described a recent study on local air and water quality issues in southern San Diego. The program included introductory remarks from Susan Taylor, Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology, Chemistry & Biochemistry at UC San Diego School of Medicine, and Margaret S. Leinen, Director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Vice Chancellor for Marine Sciences, and Dean of the School of Marine Sciences at UC San Diego. An edited version of Professor Prather’s presentation follows.

After the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, and the nationwide unrest that followed, Academy President David Oxtoby shared some thoughts with staff about the Academy's responsibility to do more to recognize and address racism in America.

L. A. Times columnist Nicholas Goldberg includes the work of the Academy’s Commission on the Arts in his column supporting public spending on the arts in California.