Five emerging poets of exceptional promise and distinguished achievement to receive Academy prize in honor of May Sarton.

On April 1, 2022, the Academy presented Henry Louis Gates, Jr. with the Don M. Randel Award for Humanistic Studies in recognition of his groundbreaking work as a scholar and public intellectual. The program, which was the Annual David M. Rubenstein Lecture, included remarks by Academy President David Oxtoby, the presentation of the award by Chair of the Academy’s Board Nancy C. Andrews, and a conversation between Gates and David M. Rubenstein. An edited version of the presentations and conversation follows.

Academy projects in Science, Engineering, and Technology seek to strengthen the capacity of science and engineering to improve the human condition. This goal has never been more important for the nation or for the world than it is today. Global challenges increasingly require collaboration across disciplinary, professional, and national boundaries. Likewise, rapid advances in information processing and transmission raise new issues for the management of scientific knowledge and for action on new discoveries.

On October 6, 2012, the American Academy inducted its 232nd class of Fellows and Foreign Honorary Members at a ceremony held in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The ceremony featured historical readings by Daniel Day-Lewis, new member Bonnie Berger, and Tom Leighton. It also included presentations by five new members: Steven H. Strogatz, Margaret J. McFall-Ngai, Maureen E. Mahoney, David Blight, and Penny Pritzker. The ceremony concluded with a memorable performance by Thomas Hampson (baritone).

William Labov is regarded as the founder of variationist sociolinguistics, a discipline dedicated to understanding and researching language in relation to social factors that include region, class, and gender. Dr. Labov has worked to promote literacy for speakers of nonstandard dialects and to develop reading and teaching materials for these populations.

The Global Security and International Affairs program area draws on the expertise of policy-makers, practitioners, and scholars to foster knowledge and inform innovative and more substantial policies that address crucial issues affecting the global community. Projects underway in this area engage with pressing strategic, development, and moral questions that underpin relations among people, communities, and states worldwide. Each initiative embraces a broad conception of security as the interaction among human, national, and global security imperatives. Project recommendations move beyond the idea of security as the absence of war toward higher aspirations of collective peace, development, and justice.

The Global Security and International Affairs program area draws on the expertise of policy-makers, practitioners, and scholars to foster knowledge and inform innovative and more substantial policies to address crucial issues affecting the global community. Projects underway in this area engage with pressing strategic development and moral questions that underpin relations among people, communities, and states worldwide. Each initiative embraces a broad conception of security as the interaction among human, national, and global security imperatives. Project recommendations move beyond the idea of security as the absence of war toward higher aspirations of collective peace, development, and justice.

A new study by the Academy’s Humanities Indicators staff reveals significant changes in students’ majors from the time they begin their baccalaureate studies to when they complete a degree (if they do). The data focused on the cohort of students who began their studies in fall 2017 and their status as of June 2024.

On February 26, 1781, the Academy published in the Independent Ledger a call for communications: “in promoting the Cause of useful Knowledge, they request the Assistance of the Ingenious in every profession.” Many individuals responded, contributing to discussions within the Academy on such matters as manufacturing, agriculture, and medicine.

Across the United States, communities are struggling to reach their economic potential. Big cities and small towns are experiencing population loss and other troubling trends, highlighting an urgent need for revitalization. Reversing these patterns is essential to ensure the entire country benefits from technological and economic progress.

William G. Thomas III, Anne Cong-Huyen, Angel David Nieves, and Jessica Marie Johnson engaged in a panel discussion on pedagogy in undergraduate digital humanities classrooms. The discussion, which was presented in collaboration with Emory University, was moderated by Erika Farr. Stephen G. Nichols and G. Wayne Clough provided national perspectives as respondents to the panel.

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

The Academy holds virtual events as well as in-person events around the country and the world that bring members, representatives of the Affiliates, and others together to explore topics of national and global concern.

Civil wars can give rise to major threats to international stability, including transnational terrorism, pandemics, mass migration and refugee flows, and regional instability. Particularly serious concerns include the ways that civil conflict can contribute to the emergence of infectious diseases, undermine efforts to respond to pandemics – such as through vaccine distribution – and generate transnational terrorism with a global reach.

Ronald Ehrenberg assesses the merits of the society job advertisements as data for measuring trends in academic employment for the humanities and offers some guidance on how they should be read.

Following an introduction from Mary C. Waters, Douglas S. Massey and Jorge Castañeda described the current state of U.S. immigration policy.

Arthur Gelb, a prominent member of the American Academy since 2000, died on November 8, 2023. He served as the Chairman of the Academy’s Investment Committee and as a member of the Academy Trust. For many Academy Induction ceremonies his role was to introduce the Class I speaker (in the mathematical and physical sciences).

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences has named Ernest J. Moniz, nuclear physicist and former United States Secretary of Energy, the recipient of the inaugural Award for Excellence in Public Policy and Public Affairs that was created to recognize excellence, independence and effectiveness in public service.

Guest edited by Denis Donoghue, essays in the volume, “On the American Narrative,” explore many of the threads that create the country’s “master story,” including American exceptionalism and the role of the Constitution as the nation’s “operating manual.” These topics, considered by fourteen prominent scholars and writers, are emerging as themes of the 2012 presidential election campaign.