More than 200 individuals with compelling achievements in academia, business, government, and public affairs were elected to the Academy in 2019.

List of Staff at the American Academy

Capitalist democracy needs rethinking and renewal. Our current political economic framework is fixated on GDP, individual achievement, and short-term profit, all the while heightening barriers to widespread prosperity. Faced with mounting climate crises and systemic discrimination, how can we reconfigure our systems to secure economic well-being for all? What steps must we take to ensure our new approaches are (and will remain) sustainable?

This Annual Report comes at an important moment in the life of the Academy. After years of primarily virtual engagement, our members are again gathering in person with a renewed sense of energy, vitality, and hope. During the last year, we held major Academy events in a dozen U.S. cities, and this fall we visited international members in Mexico City and London. In September, we hosted a historic Induction weekend for the classes of 2022 and 2023, welcoming 366 new members and more than one thousand total guests—the largest single in-person event the Academy has ever hosted. And in October and November, we released the final reports of two major Academy commissions: the Commission on Accelerating Climate Action and the Commission on Reimagining Our Economy.

This essay argues that the gray infrastructures made of steel and concrete, which we built to connect our physical world, are shallow or even fake constructs that are destroying the real and deep connections between human beings and nature, and among various natural processes and flows.

One of the recommendations for strengthening American democracy proposed in Our Common Purpose - the report of a bipartisan Academy commission - is to invest in civic education programs and professional development opportunities for educators in all communities. This article examines legislative progress at the federal, state, and local levels concerning civics education.

Select Prizes and Awards to Members

The Academy holds events virtually as well as in person around the country and the world that bring members, representatives of the Affiliates, and others together to explore topics of national and global concern. Academy President David W. Oxtoby provided opening remarks for most of the meetings listed below.

Citing a forthcoming Academy report, Neal Lane testifies in front of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and says America’s future as a global leader depends on a robust and expanding science and technology research and development agenda by the federal government.

Civil wars have changed. In the last 20 years, the average duration has increased and organizations like the UN have had a harder time keeping the peace. This has been particularly true in the Middle East and North Africa where most peace-keeping and state-building efforts have failed. James Fearon, an FSI senior fellow and member of the American Academy, tells us how and why civil wars have changed.

The American Academy of Arts & Sciences presented the Scholar-Patriot Award to acclaimed cellist and humanist Yo-Yo Ma in recognition of his lifetime achievements as a musician, educator, and champion of multicultural understanding.

Elizabeth J. Perry explains the means by which the Chinese Communist party-state maintains campus calm, despite the many unpopular and potentially unsettling higher education reforms.

Academy member Denis Feeney has spent the last few years trying to understand why the Romans developed a literature in their Latin language, when the balance of historical probability was against this happening.

By Poul Erik Christiansen, former Raymond Frankel Nuclear Security Policy Fellow at the Academy

Temple Grandin discussed the education of students who have different kinds of minds, as well as her own upbringing and work experience as a woman with autism.

On November 11 and 12, 2015, over 50 Judges and Justices, Chief Justices, legal scholars, and lawyers gathered at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Brought together by John Levi, Chairman of the Legal Services Corporation; Martha Minow, Dean of the Harvard Law School; and Lance Liebman, former Dean of the Columbia Law School, the group discussed the nation’s failure to provide legal services for low-income Americans.