Maxine Hong Kingston is awarded the Academy’s Emerson-Thoreau medal, which was first given to Robert Frost in 1958 and has since been presented to other notable authors such as T.S. Eliot, Hannah Arendt, Norman Mailer, Toni Morrison, and Margaret Atwood.

The leaders of three of the Bay Area's premiere higher education and creative institutions are being recognized for their contributions to California and the nation by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Andrea Ghez – a Nobel laureate and Professor of Physics and Astronomy at UCLA – is receiving the Rumford Prize, a storied science award given by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is being honored pioneering research on the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy that has revolutionized our understanding of the cosmos.

Since its founding, projects that work to bolster Americans’ engagement with government institutions have been a hallmark of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Our charter states that the “end and design” of the American Academy is to “cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.” Today, this effort involves projects designed to develop innovative solutions to problems facing American society in the twenty-first century. Projects in this area interpret the term “institutions” broadly, focusing on all of the constituent elements of government, civic culture, and civil society. These projects address how individual citizens interact with social structures, how these experiences prepare people to make a positive contribution to a diverse America, and how these institutions are evolving. The Academy shares this research through publications, convenings, and active outreach.

In November 2003 the people of the former Soviet state of Georgia forced a revolutionary change in leadership to establish a new government under President Mikhail Saakashvili. “Statehood and Security: Georgia after the Rose Revolution,” a new book from the American Academy, analyzes the security problems that confront this new government and the greater Caucasus region.

The collection explores new developments in the classics that are reshaping our understanding of the ancient world – and its relevance to today.

Wars and conflicts in the twenty-first century are putting tremendous strain on the strategies traditionally used by humanitarian responders to help those in need, particularly strategies that deliver effective health responses. Recent civil wars not only account for a larger proportion of ongoing conflicts, but they have become more protracted with more actors with fragmented affiliations. Some of the world’s deadliest places are not formally war zones but areas of extreme political and criminal violence, such as in Venezuela, Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Providing humanitarian aid amid urban warfare calls for strategies that are different from the ones used in rural settings, where humanitarians have commonly operated in the past. Ruthless deliberate attacks on hospitals, schools, and civilians, as well as sexual and gender-based violence, form part of many of these twenty-first-century conflicts. Humanitarian health workers and health facilities are at growing risk of attack as the normative and legal framework that has traditionally regulated war has become less protective. Geopolitical rivalry and perceptions of a weakening commitment to humanitarian norms are further undermining traditional humanitarian approaches. At the same time, the risk of infectious diseases of pandemic potential intersects with conflict-related health and humanitarian needs, presenting additional challenges for humanitarians.

Higher education leadership was the focus of the Academy’s annual convening of The Higher Education Forum in June 2025. More than one hundred higher education experts and leaders, including university presidents, provosts, and deans from many of the Academy’s Affiliates as well as several Academy members, engaged in an array of topics.

Leon Panetta, former Secretary of Defense, echoes the recommendations of Academy report on language learning, saying "we are constrained by our inadequate understanding of other nations and peoples, and by our inability to communicate effectively with them."

Since the Academy was established, newly elected members have written letters of acceptance, from George Washington in 1781 to the newest members elected in 2020. In May, the Academy started asking members to share how they were experiencing the pandemic. Then came the murder of George Floyd, which galvanized protests for racial justice across the country. Subsequent reflections included thoughts about pervasive injustice and what it means to face and address racism in our country.

Noteworthy section from the Winter 2016 issue of The Bulletin.

While the scientific community understands the benefits of international scientific collaboration, risks of such collaboration to U.S. national security are now at the forefront of debate. Terry Magnuson examines the recommendations offered in “America and the International Future of Science,” a report from the Academy’s initiative to address Challenges for International Scientific Partnerships.

The Academy convened a workshop in Chicago to discuss how a regional working group of state, local, and university leaders from the plains states could help implement the recommendations from the Academy’s recent report.

In "The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?" Michael J. Sandel argues that the divide between winners and losers has poisoned our politics and pulled us apart. The problem, he contends, is not only that we have failed to live up to the meritocratic ideals we profess, but that a meritocratic society is a flawed aspiration. It produces hubris among the successful and humiliation among those left behind. In the first virtual Stated Meeting in the history of the Academy, Michael J. Sandel joined T. J. Jackson Lears and Anna Deavere Smith in a conversation about his new book and the destructive consequences of linking socioeconomic status with personal worth.

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.

While U.S. colleges struggle against broad disinvestment, institutions of higher education in many parts of the world have imagined ambitious new models of twenty-first-century education. From world-class public research universities to online and binational start-ups, the landscape of global higher education is shaped by ongoing experimentation and change. What have these approaches taught us? And what lessons can we apply to institutions in the United States?

The visual image that most people have of the Dead Sea Scrolls is likely of one of the beautifully preserved manuscripts stored in stone jars, discovered in the hill caves of Jordan in the late 1940s. Unfortunately, only a handful of the scrolls were preserved in this way.

Since our nation’s founding, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences has celebrated excellence in every domain of scholarship and cultivated knowledge from many perspectives to advance the public good. The Academy is an independent, nonpartisan institution. Central to our work is a commitment to intellectual freedom–the freedom to teach, to learn, to speak, and to inquire without strictures of ideological or political orthodoxy. Freedom to pursue knowledge, without fear of censorship or discipline, is a bedrock value of our constitutional democracy and a practical condition for crafting the most effective solutions to our society’s toughest challenges.