Select Prizes and Awards to Members

Select Prizes and Awards to Members, New Appointments, and Publications

In an effort to place the job advertisements in the broader context of the humanities field, staff members at the Humanities Indicators gathered up the numbers reported by the larger societies back to 2001.

Geoffrey R. Stone moderated a conversation with journalist Judith Miller, Judge Richard A. Posner, and author Gabriel Schoenfeld about the balance between freedom of the press and national security. Each panelist offered his or her perspective on bridging legal and ethical issues.

Select Prizes and Awards to Members

A national survey of the public from June 2024 offers insights into how often the public engages with various aspects of the arts and humanities.

Deceased Members

SELECT PRIZES AND AWARDS TO MEMBERS

Members Elected in 2024, by Class & Section

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences was founded by visionaries who foresaw that the nascent republic would benefit from the expertise of learned citizens to guide its development, health, and integrity through whatever challenges may arise.

Today, the clarity of that vision has never been more evident. We find ourselves in a time of deepening divides across lines of politics, race, religion, income, and opportunity. The institutions we have long turned to for leadership and information are under fire, as trust in the media, government, commercial enterprise, and academia declines. Strong and responsive institutions and a healthy civil society can carry us through crises and are vitally important in their aftermath.

NPR's Michel Martin discusses a new report, "Our Common Purpose: Reinventing America for the 21st Century," with two people who worked on it: professor Danielle Allen and Justice Wallace Jefferson.

Select Prizes and Awards to Members

On September 6, 2018, at Emory University, the American Academy hosted a Morton L. Mandel Public Lecture on “The Study of African American Women’s Writing: Pasts & Futures.” The program, which included a welcome from Dwight A. McBride, served as the 2069th Stated Meeting of the American Academy. Michelle M. Wright introduced the evening’s speakers – Frances Smith Foster, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, and Pellom McDaniels III – and moderated the discussion.

In 1780, the founders of the American Academy of Arts and Sci­ences were facing a critical moment during the beginning years of the American democratic project. At the height of the American Revolutionary War, the scholar-patriots who would establish the Academy gathered to create an institution that could help make a nascent republic function and thrive.

Members Elected in 2021, by Class & Section

Projects in the Education program area examine the vital role that education plays in our nation and the world. Work in this area seeks to inform policy and practice in support of high-quality educational opportunities for all Americans. From advancing equitable educational outcomes to leveraging new developments in the learning sciences and digital technologies to understanding the vital role that public universities play as engines of economic growth, innovation, social mobility, and citizenship, projects in this area draw on scholars and practitioners from diverse fields to provide guidance and actionable solutions to policymakers, higher education leaders, and philanthropists.

The Legacy Recognition Program, an important part of the Academy’s overall effort to address and reconcile our history regarding racism and inequality, highlights the contributions of scholars, researchers, writers, artists, business leaders, community leaders, and others whose accomplishments have been overlooked or undervalued due to their race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation.

The class speakers at the Induction Ceremony explored several themes, including the value of curiosity and the unexpected; strategies to prevent scientific failures with harmful consequences; the role of the social sciences in addressing the urgent challenges of today; the processes of transformation and translation; and how openness fosters innovative and sustainable problem-solving. The ceremony featured presentations from theoretical astrophysicist Charles F. Gammie, research ecologist Helene Muller-Landau, lawyer and legal scholar Daniel E. Ho, writer and translator Jhumpa Lahiri, and economist and nonprofit leader Cecilia A. Conrad. An edited version of their presentations follows.

On September 22–23, 2022, the Academy convened an exploratory meeting to discuss the effects of prolonged war on democracy. Chaired by Neta C. Crawford (Montague Burton Professor of International Relations, University of Oxford) and Scott D. Sagan (Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, Stanford University), the meeting was held under the Chatham House Rule. The participants included political scientists, historians, lawyers, policy-makers, anthropologists, and aca­demics as well as retired U.S. military personnel and a Washington, D.C., reserve police officer. The attendees shared their expertise in militarization, civil-military relations, democratic erosion, gender and security issues, White supremacy movements, and budgeting and public finance to explore the relationships between long-term militarization, extremism, and democracy, both within the United States and abroad.