The Academy, in conjunction with a consortium of national humanities organizations, will create a prototype set of indicators – statistical data about the people who work in the humanities and about the work they do – to provide a comprehensive picture of the state of the humanities in the United States, from primary to higher education to public humanities activities.

"Witnessing the death and destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina in my hometown of New Orleans a decade ago triggered an obligation to test the utility of all that I have learned in a long career as a public health scientist."

Essays in the Fall 2009 issue of Dædalus on the global nuclear future examine the interconnected issues of a potential worldwide expansion of civilian nuclear power, attendant risks of weapons proliferation and nuclear terrorism, and the prospects for lessening the impact of climate change through growth in nuclear energy.

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 American Academy's Humanities Indicators project provides new indicators on Americans' dwindling engagement with books, the types of texts they are reading, changing attitudes about censorship, and student reading proficiency.

On October 11, 2025, the Academy inducted more than two hundred newly elected members during its annual Induction Ceremony. The program included brief remarks from five new members, each representing one of the Academy’s membership classes. Their talks addressed topics such as the transformative power of science, building trust in expertise in the age of biology, leading for breakthroughs, creating books that act as mirrors rather than windows, and the evolving impact of Title IX. The class speakers were Gregory H. Robinson (Class I: Mathematical and Physical Sciences), Ashish K. Jha (Class II: Biological Sciences), Brian Uzzi (Class III: Social and Behavioral Sciences), Jacqueline Woodson (Class IV: Humanities and Arts), and Christine Brennan (Class V: Leadership, Policy, and Communications). Edited versions of their remarks follow.

L. A. Times columnist Nicholas Goldberg includes the work of the Academy’s Commission on the Arts in his column supporting public spending on the arts in California.

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

A reflection on work done to advance democratic renewal rooted in the recommendations of the Our Common Purpose report, issued by a bipartisan Academy Commission in 2020.

The Super Bowl has inspired a wager between Robert Hauser, the executive officer of the American Philosophical Society (APS), based in Philadelphia and founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin, and Jonathan Fanton, the president of the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based American Academy of Arts & Sciences founded in 1780 by John Adams and others.

A statement from the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, approved April 2025.

While the world’s economy is increasingly global, fewer American students are studying how to speak a language other than English. That’s a backward slide that hurts the nation’s ability to compete economically and diminishes the overall quality of a typical American education. Citing Academy report on "America's Languages," the editorial board of the News & Observer makes the case for improving foreign language instruction.

The Global Security and International Affairs program area draws on the expertise of a broad range of policymakers, practitioners, and scholars to foster knowledge and promote innovative and evidence-based policies to address crucial issues affecting the international 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 at all levels of society.

Creating a “new normal” of multiliteracy and multiculturalism is key to the future of the United States as a leader on the world stage.

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).