As part of the 2013 Induction weekend, Ken Burns (President of Florentine Films) and Ernest J. Moniz (U.S. Secretary of Energy) spoke about the challenges and opportunities for the arts and the sciences.

Frank Wilczek discussed the modern concept of substance and the nature of the Higgs particle following an introduction given by Jerome Friedman.

The Academy’s Special Collections include materials related to the family life of Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, an American-born thermodynamic physicist, military officer, and inventor. Elected a Foreign Honorary Member in 1789, Rumford donated $5,000 in stock to the Academy, which later formed the basis of the prize that bears his name.

On January 22, 2014, Robert J. Birgeneau, Mary Sue Coleman, Philip Bredesen, Don M. Randel, and Frank D. Yeary participated in a conversation on the future of America’s system of public higher education.

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 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.

Vanesha Pravin, a lecturer in UC Merced’s Merritt Writing Program, receives prestigious May Sarton Prize for Poetry from the American Academy.

Richard Saller, Elaine Treharne, Franco Moretti, Joshua Cohen, and Michael A. Keller discussed the humanities in the context of rapidly developing new technologies.

Academy President David Oxtoby speaks at the 2019 Miami Dade College commencement and receives an honorary degree.

Academy Publications

For centuries, humans have sought to enhance their natural appearance and abilities through medicine, surgery, exercise, and education. Today, performance enhancement is most often associated with drugs taken by athletes and college students to improve physical and mental performance.

Academy Publications

The American Academy has a long-standing interest in arms control and international security studies, dating back to the late 1950s with the formation of the US Committee on the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs and the establishment in 1982 of the Academy's Committee on International Security Studies.

The overarching recommendation of the Academy's report on America's Languages was to establish “a national strategy to improve access to as many languages as possible for people of every region, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background—to value language education as a persistent national need.”

Recent Dædalus Issues Explore Mental Health as well as Language & Social Justice in the United States

On May 15, 2014, at the Academy’s 2008th Stated Meeting, five experts discussed how institutions protect against the threat of nuclear terrorism.

What do students learn in college? When do professors learn how to teach? How can we ensure students are truly being educated for the future? The answers to these questions are determined in part by the quality of instruction students receive, yet public policy discussions about higher education rarely focus on teaching. Michael S. McPherson and Sandy Baum explored the importance of improving teaching and strengthening the college learning experience in the Fall 2019 issue of Dædalus.

Federico Capasso and Alfred Cho recognized for invention, application of laser technology

The Academy’s Berkeley Committee hosted a panel discussion on generative AI (GenAI) that offered a technical overview of the technology and explored the legal and economic issues raised by the growing number of lawsuits challenging the legality of GenAI. The panel included Jennifer Chayes, Dean of the UC Berkeley College of Computing, Data Science, and Society; Pamela Samuelson, Professor of Law at UC Berkeley School of Law; and Abhishek Nagaraj, economist and Associate Professor at the Berkeley Haas School of Business. Goodwin Liu, Chair of the Academy’s Board of Directors, delivered welcome remarks. An edited transcript of the panelists’ presentations and discussion follows.

How do we renew confidence in America’s institutions and strengthen public engagement in civic life? The Spring 2013 issue of Dædalus suggests ways in which government, corporations, nonprofits, the judiciary, and the media can inspire greater confidence in our democratic system and a renewed commitment to civil discourse.