Targeted programs and policies to support early-career investigators and high-risk, high-reward research are needed to preserve U.S. leadership in science and technology.

The Academy’s record of distinction in Science, Engineering, and Technology dates to its founding mission “to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.” Rather than generate new scientific research, the role of the Academy has been uniquely interdisciplinary, bridging the social sciences and arts with the physical sciences to support a national understanding, belief, and trust in science and discovery. Perhaps no better example of this can be found than in the mid-1800s when the Academy hosted hotly contested debates about a new scientific theory – the theory of evolution.

On October 6, 2018, the American Academy inducted its 238th class of Members at a ceremony held in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The ceremony featured readings from the letters of John and Abigail Adams by Katherine Farley and Jerry Speyer, a performance by André Watts, and presentations by Linda T. Elkins-Tanton, Huda Y. Zoghbi, Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, Robert Gooding-Williams, and David Miliband.

Ruth Lehmann and Gertrud M. Schüpbach have been awarded the 2020 Francis Amory Prize in Reproductive Medicine and Reproductive Physiology by the Academy. The discoveries made by Lehmann, a cell biologist, and Schüpbach, a geneticist, have advanced their own fields and contributed to knowledge and progress in DNA repair, embryonic development, RNA regulation, stem cell research, and other areas.

What challenges confront U.S. courts as democratic institutions in the twenty-first century? And what does the changing role of courts teach us about our conceptions of justice? The Summer 2014 issue of Dædalus explores the complex shifts occurring in U.S. courts and the implications for the citizens that rely on them.

The Academy hosted a meeting at the University of California, Los Angeles, on public research universities in the twenty-first century. The speakers included Gene Block, Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, and Kim A. Wilcox.

Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, former Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn, and prominent physicist and arms control expert Sidney D. Drell, will be honored with one of the nation’s oldest awards.

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 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.

Climate change, soil erosion, human rights, Indigenous peoples, and “fixing” our democracy — the class speakers at the 2019 Induction Ceremony addressed major issues facing the world today, with calls to action and calls for change. Following a reading from the letters of John and Abigail Adams by humanitarian Jane Olson and attorney Ronald Olson, newly elected members spoke passionately about their life’s work. The ceremony featured presentations from paleoclimatologists Ellen Mosley-Thompson and Lonnie G. Thompson; microbiologist Jo Handelsman; former United Nations diplomat Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein; historian Margaret Jacobs; and lawyer and advocate Sherrilyn Ifill. An edited version of their presentations follows.
2083rd Stated Meeting | October 12, 2019 | Cambridge, MA

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The Spring 2010 issue of Dædalus explores the impact of new technologies and evolving patterns of news consumption on American media. Sixteen authors join guest editor Loren Ghiglione, a veteran of almost four decades in journalism and the Richard A. Schwarzlose Professor of Media Ethics at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, in an in-depth look at the revolution occurring in the news media and the future of investigative journalism.

What if, by simplifying the courts — and expecting low-income people without representation to make productive use of the do-it-yourself tools available to them — the courts are inadvertently hindering access to justice? Lawyers Colleen Shanahan and Anna Carpenter make the argument in their Daedalus essay on why "Simplified Courts Can’t Solve Inequality."

Jack Fuller reflects on the speeches of Edward H. Levi, who "helped restore the belief that the Department of Justice was committed to the rule of law" and served as President of the American Academy from 1986-1989.

What challenges confront U.S. courts as democratic institutions in the twenty-first century? And what does the changing role of courts teach us about our conceptions of justice?

At the 860th Meeting of the Academy held June 14, 1893 in the Physiological Lecture Room of the Harvard Medical School in Boston, physician and Member Harold C. Ernst, using diagrams, lantern slides, and live samples, explained the methods of investigation...