Academy Publications

The American Academy today announced that Jonathan F. Fanton, former President of The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and of The New School, has been named its 46th President.

A Law360 article about the publication "The Case for Supreme Court Term Limits" issued by the Academy's bipartisan working group quotes Professor Akhil Reed Amar and Professor Charles Fried who are members of the working group and the Academy.

On November 22, 1788, the General Court of Massachusetts approved the Academy’s petition to hold a public lottery. Proceeds would go toward the purchase of a unique, grand model of the solar system for Harvard College.

A recent Academy event about artificial intelligence and the law explored how AI tools like ChatGPT and Bing Chat might impact the accessibility, reliability, and regulation of legal and other professional services. The event was part of the work of the Academy’s Making Justice Accessible project.

A statement from Academy President David Oxtoby on the passing of Louis Wellington Cabot, who was an active and valued Academy member for more than six decades.

The UN Department of Political Affairs' Politically Speaking magazine interviewed project contributors.

Yuval Levin (American Enterprise Institute)'s Opinion Piece in the New York Times on the case for enlarging the House of Representatives; with the headline “Some Good Can Come Out of the Kevin McCarthy Fiasco.”

A wide-ranging survey of humanities departments shows that prior to the pandemic, departments in most humanities disciplines appeared relatively unchanged since the Great Recession, with the exception of declines in undergraduate degrees.

Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post presents the recommendations in “Our Common Purpose” on social media and disinformation as key to restoring American democracy.

Paul Wise will cochair the latest Academy project on “Rethinking the Humanitarian Health Response to Violent Conflict,” designed to help define new strategies for the provision of essential health services in areas of violent conflict.

The CORE Score is a nationwide measurement of American wellbeing. It was launched in November 2023 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences as a result of the cross-partisan, multi-disciplinary Commission on Reimagining Our Economy (CORE).

Online

Terence Blanchard, a member of the Academy and of the Commission on the Arts, is a jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, and educator. His contribution to Mixtape – an online gallery of poems, stories, song, videos, and visual art – is an illustrated and illuminating video in which he shares the journey from his musical childhood to becoming the first Black composer presented on the Metropolitan Opera stage.

The ASTC blog dives into the final report from the Public Face of Science initiative on Priorities for the Future, offering an overview and several important takeaways.

As I reflect on my first few months as president of the Academy, one of the great joys has been getting to know our extraordinary fellowship of members. As of this writing, I have had the opportunity to visit our vibrant member communities in North Carolina, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, New York, Southern California, Chicago, and, of course, the Academy’s home in the Boston-Cambridge area. In each location, I have been awed by our fellow members: their achievements, their passions, their hopes for the future. The articles in this issue also represent the power of the local–with deliberations in San Diego, New York City, and Los Angeles.

The Academy cohosted a German-American exchange about the political responsibility of universities for democratic culture as part of ongoing discussions about the importance of democratic values in the twenty-first century.