"Science & the Legal System," the Fall 2018 issue of Dædalus, Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, features thirteen essays on topics including the state of the forensic sciences, expert testimony in court, the role of science in abortion law, neuroscience and law, and reforms to the U.S. adversarial system.

The criminalization of immigrants in America has been a decades-long project advanced by Democrats and Republicans alike with Donald Trump's campaign a sharp turn toward explicit nativism. The essays in the Spring 2021 issue of Dædalus offer a bleak assessment of how we got here, but some still find room for optimism.

​​​​​​​The Rumford Prize – a storied science award presented by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences – has been given to astrophysicist and experimental cosmologist Charles L. Bennett.

“Access to Justice,” the Winter 2019 issue of Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, is a multidisciplinary exploration of the challenges, costs, and opportunities related to the crisis of limited civil legal services.

In the face of increasing polarization and considerable stress on the American polity, a new issue of Dædalus begins a much-needed public conversation about how individuals and institutions can work together to strengthen democracy and promote the common good.

Tom Cech (Howard Hughes Medical Institute) will present the recommendations of the American Academy’s ARISE report to members of Congress and their staff at a Capitol Hill briefing organized by the American Chemical Society.

Global challenges, like the COVID-19 pandemic, underscore the value of international coordination and collaboration. In the case of pandemics, this need comes into play not only in managing and mitigating the spread of the disease, but also in the development of treatment therapies and vaccines. Indeed, the first COVID-19 vaccine approved by the U.S. Federal Drug Administration in December 2020 arose from an international collaboration between U.S. and German-based biotech companies, each led by immigrants from Greece and Turkey, respectively.

How might social research contribute to a retreat from mass incarceration, make the world fairer, and promote alternatives to punishment that help communities become safer and healthier? In a presentation at the Academy, Bruce Western explored this topic and the implications of mass incarceration for racial and economic inequality.

The two-day forum, part of a project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, led by the Freeman Spogli Institute’s Karl Eikenberry and Stephen Krasner, gathered experts to examine trends in civil wars and solutions moving forward.

What is consciousness? How do we store memories, process thoughts, and command our bodies? Why do we require sleep to live? And can we trust our perception of the world around us? The Winter 2015 issue of Dædalus responds to these fundamental questions of human experience, exploring “What is the Brain Good For?” through recent developments and new theories in the field of neuroscience.

On January 7, 2019, the Academy published the first open-access issue of Dædalus in the journal’s sixty-four-year history. “Access to Justice,” the Winter 2019 issue, is a multidisciplinary examination of the national crisis in legal services, from the challenges of providing quality legal assistance to more people, to the social and economic costs of an of- ten unresponsive legal system, to the opportunities for improvement offered by new technologies, professional innovations, and fresh ways of thinking about the crisis.

Like many other organizations, the Academy has been reviewing its policies related to members accused of crimes or other inappropriate actions (e.g., sexual harassment, falsification of research results, intentional plagiarism, and other breaches in professional ethics or academic misconduct). While the Academy’s 1780 charter and the current bylaws provide for expelling or disenfranchising members for cause, there is no record that the Academy has taken any action related to expelling a member nor any policy to guide the practice.

It is with profound sadness that the Academy notes the death of former Academy President Leo L. Beranek on October 10, 2016, at age 102. Dr. Beranek served as President from 1989 to 1994. He was an active and devoted member of the Academy.