The closing program of the Academy’s 2025 Induction weekend featured a presentation by new member David Dunning on the psychology of overconfidence and its influence on decision-making, followed by a conversation with Academy President Laurie L. Patton. An edited transcript of the presentation and conversation follows.

On November 13, 2013, David F. Levi, Jack Fuller, Virginia A. Seitz, Harold Hongju Koh, and Mark L. Wolf discussed the legacy of Attorney General Edward H. Levi.

From visual arts to jazz, theater to poetry, the opening program of the Academy’s 2019 Induction weekend celebrated the arts and humanities. The event included a video featuring artist Mark Bradford; a performance by composer, pianist, and singer/songwriter Patricia Barber; remarks about the power and importance of the performing arts from theater director and scholar Harry J. Elam, Jr.; a reading by playwright Donald Margulies from his play Sight Unseen; and remarks and readings by poet, writer, and foundation leader Elizabeth Alexander.

On April 12, 2012, North Korea unsuccessfully launched a long-range missile that was intended to carry an Earth observation satellite into space. North Korea fired the long-range test rocket in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions and an agreement with the United States. On the eve of the launch, the Academy convened leading North Korea experts to discuss the broader geopolitical and nonproliferation implications of North Korea’s nuclear program.

Jeanne Gang, founding principal and partner of Studio Gang, is known for her forward-looking approach to design. She creates spaces that connect people with each other, their communities, and the environment. Her projects range from cultural centers to public projects that connect citizens with ecology to high-rise towers that foster community. At a virtual Stated Meeting, Jeanne Gang discussed how the design of physical spaces supports social, civic, and democratic infrastructure – a recommendation offered in Our Common Purpose, the final report of the Academy’s Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship.

The Academy’s new strategic framework presents four animating principles and seven strategies that are designed to ensure that the Academy continues to produce high-quality, interdisciplinary work that addresses urgent societal challenges. In 2025, the Academy’s programmatic work laid the groundwork for new projects and initiatives that will implement this framework and built on ongoing efforts to increase impact and raise the visibility of the institution with external audiences. These audiences include policymakers at the federal, state, and local level; leaders in philanthropy, higher education, nonprofit organizations, and business; scholars and students; advocacy groups; professional groups and practitioners; and the public.

Economist and philosopher Amartya Sen discusses the importance of democracy, following an introduction from Thomas Scanlon.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has unleashed a humanitarian catastrophe, but Ukraine is only the most visible example of contemporary conflicts subjecting populations to systematic violence and depriving them of life-saving humanitarian assistance. In Ethiopia, Sudan, Yemen, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the eroding purchase of international humanitarian law, combined with intensifying geopolitical competition and the rapidly changing character of modern warfare, have put enormous strain on humanitarian actors. An issue of Daedalus explores the conflicts and the implications.

Harold Varmus, Susan R. Wente, Tania Baker, and Mark C. Fishman participated in a conference on ensuring the stability of the biomedical research enterprise in the United States. Richard H. Brodhead introduced the panel discussion, which was moderated by Nancy C. Andrews and Sally Kornbluth.

At a meeting sponsored by the American Academy, the Royal Society, and the Carnegie Institution for Science, Wendy Freedman (Crawford H. Greenewalt Chair and Director of Carnegie Observatories at the Carnegie Institution for Science) and Martin Rees (Fellow of Trinity College; Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge; Astronomer Royal; and Visiting Professor at Imperial College London and at Leicester University) discussed what we know and do not know about the universe.

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.

On June 6, 2012, Internet pioneers Tom Leighton, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and David D. Clark discussed the future of the Web. The meeting, presented in collaboration with the Royal Society and the British Consulate-General, was the inaugural program in a lecture series on ‘GREAT Science,’ organized by the U.K. government’s Science and Innovation Network to profile international science excellence.

Select Prizes and Awards to Members

On October 11, 2014, the American Academy inducted its 234th class of Fellows and Foreign Honorary Members. The ceremony included presentations by new Fellows Ramamurti Shankar, Diana H. Wall, Sherry Turkle, Mary Kelley, and John W. Rogers, Jr.

On May 18, 2017, the American Academy, in partnership with the Carnegie Institution for Science, hosted a meeting at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., on “Communicating Science in an Age of Disbelief in Experts.”