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.

ARISE II cochair Keith Yamamoto argues that knocking down boundaries between scientific disciplines would reveal great new opportunities; indeed, a new game.

2110th Stated Meeting | January 18, 2023 | Virtual Event | Morton L. Mandel Conversation

The Commission on the Arts is the Academy’s first major programmatic effort focused on the arts and culture. At its center is the belief that the arts are essential to both individual and civic life and that artists are crucial to the functioning and development of healthy communities.

Artists can help us emerge and heal from the global pandemic — but first we have to create more systems that support them and their work. Laura Zabel, member of the American Academy’s Commission on the Arts, explains how.

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 American Academy of Arts and Sciences was founded by visionaries who foresaw that the nascent republic would benefit from the expertise of learned citizens to guide its development, health, and integrity through whatever challenges may arise.

Today, the clarity of that vision has never been more evident. We find ourselves in a time of deepening divides across lines of politics, race, religion, income, and opportunity. The institutions we have long turned to for leadership and information are under fire, as trust in the media, government, commercial enterprise, and academia declines. Strong and responsive institutions and a healthy civil society can carry us through crises and are vitally important in their aftermath.

The 2015 Induction Ceremony included presentations by five new members: Phil S. Baran, Patricia Smith Churchland, Roland G. Fryer, Jr., Sally Haslanger, and Darren Walker.

Across the United States, communities are struggling to reach their economic potential. Big cities and small towns are experiencing population loss and other troubling trends, highlighting an urgent need for revitalization. Reversing these patterns is essential to ensure the entire country benefits from technological and economic progress.

Essays explore how technological innovations and political shifts are changing the nature of warfare.

On June 15, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled by a 6-to-3 majority that “An employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender defies the law.” This ruling is a historic victory for gay and transgender rights, extending employment protections to millions of LGBT+ workers, and will force many employers to revisit and change discriminatory policies and practices. But what this means for faith-based employers, including religious schools and religious health care providers, will be decided in future cases. Are faith-based employers legally entitled to religious exemptions to the law? Should they be?

2106th Stated Meeting | April 20, 2022 | Virtual Event
Jonathan F. Fanton Lecture

A profound lack of awareness of the unique, sovereign, and central role that Native Americans have played in the United States persists. And there is little recognition of how the knowledge of Indigenous people could contribute to a better shared future.

The Academy’s New Haven Program Committee, in partnership with Yale University’s MacMillan Center, hosted a conversation on national and international policies for slowing global warming that featured William Nordhaus (Yale University), recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. The program included remarks from Pinelopi Goldberg (Yale University; formerly, The World Bank Group) and Scott Barrett (Columbia University) as well as introductions from Steven Wilkinson (Yale University) and David Oxtoby (American Academy of Arts & Sciences).

After issuing a final report and recommendations, members of the Commission on Accelerating Climate Action are attending events across the country to discuss the report with business leaders, professors, researchers, activists, and policy makers.

Essays offer insight about the Internet of the (near) future- and its implications

William Labov is regarded as the founder of variationist sociolinguistics, a discipline dedicated to understanding and researching language in relation to social factors that include region, class, and gender. Dr. Labov has worked to promote literacy for speakers of nonstandard dialects and to develop reading and teaching materials for these populations.