Despite the many challenges to higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded by every field except the humanities increased through the end of the 2021 academic year.

Institutions are critical to our personal and societal well-being. They facilitate relationships; they regulate behavior. They develop and disseminate knowledge, enforce the law, keep us healthy, and uphold social and religious norms.

The crafters of the Constitution expected the size of the House to grow as the U.S. population increased. Citing the American Academy report on “The Case for Expanding the House of Representatives,” Kevin Kosar calls for Capitol Hill to consider the proposition.

Governance & Committees, 2021–2022

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

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.

Now is the moment to think about the people, places, and practices of democracy, write Hollie Russon Gilman, Darshan Goux, and Elizabeth Youngling in this op-ed.

Noteworthy

Citing Academy report "America's Languages," Kathleen Stein-Smith explores the increasing scarcity of foreign language classes and teachers.

Since our nation’s founding, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences has celebrated excellence in every domain of scholarship and cultivated knowledge from many perspectives to advance the public good. The Academy is an independent, nonpartisan institution. Central to our work is a commitment to intellectual freedom–the freedom to teach, to learn, to speak, and to inquire without strictures of ideological or political orthodoxy. Freedom to pursue knowledge, without fear of censorship or discipline, is a bedrock value of our constitutional democracy and a practical condition for crafting the most effective solutions to our society’s toughest challenges.

Select Prizes and Awards to Members

Study is requested by bipartisan group of members of U.S. Senate & House of Representatives.

On April 11, 2019, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences presented the inaugural Award for Excellence in Public Policy and Public Affairs to Ernest J. Moniz, the 13th Secretary of Energy of the United States. Ashton Carter, who served as the 25th Secretary of Defense of the United States and is the current Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School, introduced Secretary Moniz and presented the award. An edited version of Secretary Moniz’s acceptance remarks appears below.

Greetings from Cambridge, Massachusetts, where earlier this fall the Academy celebrated its first in-person Induction weekend since 2019. We welcomed new members from the classes of 2020 and 2021 with an opening celebration featuring Yo-Yo Ma in conversation with David Rubenstein at Harvard Business School’s Klarman Hall. On the following day, new members gathered with governance members, project leaders, and Academy staff for a lively open house at the Academy’s headquarters in Norton’s Woods. Later that afternoon, the two classes of inductees gathered at MIT’s Kresge Auditorium for a resumption of the moving Induction Ceremony that we have all missed for so long.

Los Angeles is globally renowned for its cultural institutions and communities, and attracts some of the world’s most creative and artistic talent. While the film industry and Hollywood tend to draw the most attention, numerous other institutions in the region have made significant investments in places and projects that support and promote cultural production in the city. On March 3, 2024, the Academy’s Los Angeles Program Committee hosted a gathering at The Getty Center with local members to discuss the evolution of this larger cultural infrastructure. It was the Academy’s 2121st Stated Meeting and a Morton L. Mandel Conversation.

An evening program at the Congressional Visitors Center in Washington, D.C., featured Commission Cochairs John W. Rowe and Richard H. Brodhead; Commission members David Brooks, Karl W. Eikenberry, Pauline Yu, and John Lithgow; Senators Lamar Alexander and Mark Warner; and Congressmen Tom Petri and David Price.

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.

Arts education, properly supported and available to all, can play a vital role in our recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Arts Commission cochairs John Lithgow, Deborah Rutter, and Natasha Trethewey make the case for arts education commitment in the Chicago Tribune.