“Anticorruption: How to Beat Back Political & Corporate Graft” explores the nature of modern global corruption – and how to defeat it. Highlighting examples from the United States, Brazil, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Nigeria, and Singapore, the authors in this issue – including both academics and law-makers – offer innovative, strategic, and practical recommendations to target public and private corruption.

Corruption can be ruinous, destroying nations, institutions, communities, individuals, the environment, and the very notion of public trust. Corruption self-reinforces, respects no law or border, and reproduces like disease. The Summer 2018 issue of Dædalus features fifteen essays exploring the nature of modern global corruption—and how to defeat it.

By Kathryn Moffat, Senior Program Officer for Global Security and International Affairs at the Academy

The American Academy of Arts & Sciences hosted a distinguished group of judges, attorneys, human rights specialists, and academics to discuss whether an International Anti-Corruption Court (IACC) would contribute to global peace and security and, if so, how it might be established.

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).

The CORE Score website and infrastructure, developed at the Academy as part of its work to understand how Americans experience the economy, is moving to Yale for further growth, support, and analysis. Academy President Laurie Patton described the development as "a great example of how intellectual and institutional partnership makes us all stronger.”

Recent business scandals reveal a disturbing breakdown of values in corporate America. A new book from the American Academy examines the failure of “gatekeepers” – corporate directors, auditors, regulators, lawyers, investment bankers, and business journalists – to stand between corporate misconduct and the public interest.

A Wall Street Journal essay features the CORE Score, a metric created by the Academy's Commission on Reimagining the Economy to help move national focus from how the economy is doing to how Americans are doing. In this essay, the CORE Score helps explain how standard economic measures may indicate a good economy, while that's not what many Americans are feeling about their own wellbeing.

As the United States approaches the 2024 presidential election, several journalists and commentators have been puzzled by one question: “Why do Americans seem so unhappy with an economy that appears to be doing so well?” Polls are influenced by many factors, but recent results show how pessimistic many Americans feel about the economy. And yet, judged by traditional economic metrics like the GDP or the Dow Jones, the economy is doing well. How do we explain this paradox?

Arts and sciences faculty sticks with a three-course-sequence foreign language requirement, even as other institutions shrink their language requirements.

This fall the Academy Archives embarks on a new project to clean, repair, rehouse, and digitize many important documents from the Academy's early years, as well as a unique collection of records to related to the family of Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford.

Expanding national service to more young people is one tangible investment we can make in strengthening our republic and the ties that bind us together as a people. This op-ed looks at one of the recommendations from the Our Common Purpose report: to create a universal expectation of national service.

Select Prizes and Awards to Members

The Commission on Reimagining Our Economy issues final report and new dashboard in its efforts to advance an American economy that is centered on working for the people who make it work.

A Bloomberg article about the new metric of wellbeing issued by the Commission on Reimagining Our Economy - the CORE Score - considers how it might shed light on a a disconnect between how Americans have been feeling about the economy and standard indicators of economic activity.

As a member of the Academy, you received the official announcement about the 261 individuals elected in 2022. Here are a few reactions on Twitter to the big news.