Rolena Adorno offers an abbreviated version of the remarks she made at the 130th Modern Language Association Annual Convention on January 10, 2015.

The Academy holds in-person and virtual events that bring members, Affiliates, and others in their communities together to explore topics of national and global concern. Academy President David W. Oxtoby provided opening remarks for most of the meetings in 2021 and 2022.

Some notable patterns have emerged in a series of surveys surveys asking about public engagement with various types of humanistic and artistic content.

For a full and up-to-date listing of upcoming events, please visit amacad.org/events.

The Academy hosted a meeting at the University of Chicago on the benefits and risks of nuclear, biological, and information technologies. The speakers included Robert Rosner, James M. Acton, Elisa D. Harris, and Herbert Lin.

The place of the military in the public consciousness has changed dramatically over time. In a Gallup poll from 2011 that measured the public’s confidence in sixteen major institutions, the military ranked higher than any other institution, with 78 percent of respondents stating their respect for and confidence in the armed forces. On December 7, 2011 – the seventieth anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor – the Academy convened a panel of scholars at Stanford University to discuss the military and international relations.

May R. Berenbaum presented at the fall Stated Meeting of the Midwest Center of the American Academy. The talk was a condensed and popularized version of her paper titled "Animal-Plant Warfare: Molecular Basis for Cytochrome P450-Mediated Natural Adaptation."

The humanities, arts, and culture are woven through virtually every Academy program, where artists and humanists add interdisciplinary breadth to projects in science, democracy, and security. However, the Academy also undertakes projects that put humanities, arts, and culture at the forefront, strengthening their practice and highlighting their importance to all aspects of the nation’s thriving intellectual life. These projects call attention to the role the arts and humanities play in enriching the growth and vitality of individuals, communities, and the nation.

The Academy hosted a discussion about pressing issues facing the world in 2025. The event featured Kwame Anthony Appiah (New York University), Michael Froman (Council on Foreign Relations), and Adam Tooze (Columbia University) in conversation with Anne-Marie Slaughter (New America). Academy President Laurie L. Patton delivered the opening remarks. Transcript and video online.

On March 30, 2025, the Academy’s Chicago Committee hosted an event for members and guests that explored the role of cultural organizations and the communities they serve. The program featured Leah A. Dickerman (The Museum of Modern Art) and Oskar Eustis (The Public Theater) in conversation with Academy President Laurie L. Patton. An edited transcript of the program follows.

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.

A dinner discussion on DNA and Art: In Search of the Genome of Leonardo da Vinci, featuring Jesse H. Ausubel, director of the Program for the Human Environment at The Rockefeller University and introductory remarks from Kenneth Wallach (Central National Gottesman Inc.) who cochairs the New York Program Committee.

Recent surveys administered by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Alliance for Museums, Americans for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts show that U.S. cultural institutions enjoy strong public approval. However, despite that high regard, studies reveal a decline in engagement with many of these institutions, particularly since the pandemic.

Lassina Zerbo, Rose E. Gottemoeller, Siegfried Hecker, and Robert Rosner participated in a discussion on the prospects for ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and the challenges presented by nuclear testing.

While COVID-19 cases and mortality surged in spring and summer 2020, the U.S. government seemed to lack the capacity to respond. Mixed messaging and insufficient testing, ventilators, personal protective equipment, and contact tracing raised disturbing questions about the will of the executive and the health of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But were these challenges particular to the pandemic? Or, as one author asks in the newest issue of Dædalus, “is the failed pandemic response a symptom of a diseased administrative state?”

The 2011 Induction weekend included a symposium on American Institutions and a Civil Society, which featured two panel discussions: The American Military and American Democracy and The Constitution, the Practice of Democracy, and Unintended Consequences.

Essays explore Russia under Vladimir Putin and the prospects for significant political changes today and in a post-Putin era.

The Commission on Reimagining Our Economy is working on a photojournal with the work of four photographers capturing what it looks like to try to get by in the United States today for Americans earning around the national median income ($70,784 for a household in 2021).