The importance of public-private partnership; the assault on science and scientists; the attacks on knowledge, ideas, education, and democracy; the history of the American West and the American military; and the power of stories to teach, build bridges, and bring about social change – the class speakers at the Induction Ceremony for members elected in 2020 and 2021 addressed major issues facing the world today, with calls to action and calls for change. The ceremony featured presentations from engineer Lisa T. Su; neurosurgeon, medical reporter, and writer Sanjay Gupta; scholar and writer on civil rights and critical race theory Kimberlé W. Crenshaw; historian Patricia Limerick; and labor union activist Mary Kay Henry. An edited version of their presentations follows.

The Global Security and International Affairs program area draws on the expertise of policy-makers, practitioners, and scholars to foster knowledge and inform innovative and more substantial policies to address crucial issues affecting the global 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.

Local Program Committees and Representatives bring together communities of members to connect, explore topics of interest, and
advise informally on Academy projects.

At a program hosted by the Academy’s New Haven Program Committee, Linda Greenhouse (New York Times columnist and Senior Research Scholar in Law at Yale Law School) discussed the United States Supreme Court’s transformational year and the challenges to Roe v. Wade.

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

Local Program Committees and Representatives bring members together to connect with the Academy and each other in the communities where they live.

Local Program Committees and Representatives bring together communities of members to connect, explore topics of interest, and advise informally on Academy projects.

This essay argues that the gray infrastructures made of steel and concrete, which we built to connect our physical world, are shallow or even fake constructs that are destroying the real and deep connections between human beings and nature, and among various natural processes and flows.

Representatives of the Initiative for Humanities and Culture's two major components—the Research Program and the Humanities Indicators Program—came together to refine and elaborate on their future plans and to learn about each other's progress.

Academy Prizes

The Academy holds events around the country and the world. These gatherings bring members and others in their communities together to explore topics of national and global concern through an interdisciplinary lens that draws on the breadth and expertise of the Academy’s membership.

Prizes Awarded by the American Academy

Rolena Adorno offers an abbreviated version of the remarks she made at the 130th Modern Language Association Annual Convention on January 10, 2015.

On April 18, 2024, Kwame Anthony Appiah received the Academy’s Don M. Randel Award for Humanistic Studies. Established in 1975 as the Award for Humanistic Studies and renamed in 2017 in honor of musicologist Don M. Randel, the award recognizes outstanding contributions to humanistic scholarship. The award ceremony included opening remarks from Academy President David W. Oxtoby, a reading of the prize citation by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., acceptance remarks from Professor Appiah, and a conversation between Professor Appiah and journalist Margaret Sullivan. An edited transcript of the program follows.

Prizes and Prizewinners

Academy Prizes

Recent Prizes and Prizewinners

Prizes and Prizewinners

Induction Weekend 2025 began with an Opening Celebration that featured the announcement of the new Legacy Recognition Honorees with a special message from John Legend, followed by a conversation between David M. Rubenstein, Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of The Carlyle Group, and Kenny Leon, Tony Award–winning stage and television director and new member of the Academy. An edited version of their conversation follows.