The criminalization of immigrants in America has been a decades-long project advanced by Democrats and Republicans alike with Donald Trump's campaign a sharp turn toward explicit nativism. The essays in the Spring 2021 issue of Dædalus offer a bleak assessment of how we got here, but some still find room for optimism.

A transcript from an interdisciplinary panel discussion on the importance of creativity in science, with participants highlighting how creativity and imagination fuel scientific discovery and how science inspires artistic expression. The conversation followed the presentation of the Rumford Prize to Andrea Ghez by Laurie Patton.

One hundred years ago, the United States ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, granting women the right to vote. The publication of the Winter 2020 issue of Dædalus “Women & Equality,” guest edited by Nannerl O. Keohane and Frances McCall Rosenbluth at the centennial is a celebration of this victory for women’s rights. Yet while the inclusion of women in the electorate was a momentous occasion, it notably left behind most Black women, and while women have made incredible strides toward equality since, there is still a long way to go.

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.

The Academy’s project on the Alternative Energy Future is working to identify societal barriers to the widespread adoption of new energy technologies and to assess how these barriers might be better understood and managed.

The Academy’s founders understood well the dangers of concentrated power and authoritarian rule. They recognized that a representative government needs checks and balances, the separation of powers, individual rights, and an independent judiciary–“a government of laws, not of men,” in the words of John Adams, one of the Academy’s founders. They also grasped the essential role of free inquiry in sustaining democracy, as well as the importance of liberty as a precondition for the pursuit of knowledge. That vision is captured in the Academy’s seal and motto, Sub Libertate Florent: the arts and sciences “flourish under freedom.”

The Academy hosted a multi-faceted conversation about the interconnectedness of polarization, institutions, and the public’s trust in science. The panelists shared views from academic, journalistic, and institutional perspectives about how the public trust has been eroded and how the trust can be restored.

In the face of increasing polarization and considerable stress on the American polity, a new issue of Dædalus begins a much-needed public conversation about how individuals and institutions can work together to strengthen democracy and promote the common good.

Those of us who teach undergraduates are familiar with the trend revealed in these data. Baccalaureate graduates typically have earned more course credits in the humanities (about 17% as defined here) than in STEM fields (about 13%). STEM majors earn fewer credits in the humanities than do students majoring in other areas; and students majoring in the humanities, business, social sciences, and education apparently earn no more than a required minimum of their credits in STEM courses.

Access to justice is a “stunningly invisible issue given its importance in the country.” The latest issue of Daedalus, featuring two dozen articles from leading law professors, researchers and experts, shines a spotlight on a topic that often gets lost in the din of a nonstop news cycle.

Economist and Academy member Daron Acemoglu received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics for groundbreaking work that illuminates how institutions shape economies. Acemoglu was a vital contributor to the Academy's Commission on Reimagining Our Economy, a cross-disciplinary effort to understand and improve the economy for the people who make it work.

The Academy convened a workshop in Chicago to discuss how a regional working group of state, local, and university leaders from the plains states could help implement the recommendations from the Academy’s recent report.

In this Washington Post column, Danielle Allen identifies state ballot initiatives that can help Americans rebuild a civic culture of commitment to one another and our democracy.

Academy member Abraham Loeb connects the future of technological innovation to the lessons of the humanities, citing Academy report "The Heart of the Matter."

The latest report from the Academy's Humanities Indicators project examines the shrinking share of degrees at the baccalaureate level but also notes signs of stability or improvement for the humanities fields, including evidence of rising interest in the humanities at the pre-baccalaureate level, increases in funding, and a steady stream of new academic books.

In October 1964, China simultaneously announced the success of its first nuclear test and pledged to the international community that it would never be the first country to use nuclear weapons. For more than 40 years, this “no-first-use” doctrine has guided China’s nuclear policy, resulting in a nuclear arsenal much smaller than those of the world’s four other major nuclear powers.

In a forum essay, the HULA team (Danielle Allen, Maggie Schein, Christopher Pupik Dean, and David Kidd) describes its work, which start in the education sector but are now being extended to public humanities projects.