One of the most notable developments in American academic life of the past sixty years has been intellectual renewal where it might have been least expected: among evangelical Christians.

An exploratory meeting at the Academy brought together more than 20 participants - spanning the fields of science, technology, journalism, museum education, and law - to discuss how to bridge the gap between science and the public. They discussed changes in the science engagement landscape and the challenge of not only reaching people but also cutting through the noise and making them care.

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.

Remembrance of Stephen R. Graubard

Scott Russell Sanders discusses writing as discovery for the Bulletin’s new feature, “On the Professions”

Danielle Allen, Harvard political theorist and cochair of the Academy's project on democratic citizenship, discusses the US’s founding, prison abolition, and the future of democracy with Ezra Klein.

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences has published a new collection of essays, Using Imaging to Identify Deceit: Scientific and Ethical Questions, examining the scientific support for using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to recognize deception.

What does it mean to conduct responsible, ethical, and constructive social research within the Middle East and North Africa and around the world? For decades, social scientists who work in and on the Middle East have confronted the ethical complexities of working with research participants, partners, and colleagues who are at risk. Conflict, autocracy, censorship, poverty, inequality, disciplinary imperatives, and institutional interests all shape research opportunities and agendas in ways that may imperil careers, livelihoods, and even lives.

Call for more outreach and research to counter misinformation.

For a full and up-to-date listing of upcoming events, please visit amacad.org/events.

As the photos and articles in this Bulletin convey, the Academy continues to deliver on its important mission of celebrating excellence and advancing the common good. We are well positioned to do so in light of the accomplishments of David Oxtoby, who served more than five years as Academy President and stepped down from the role in June. We are indebted to David for his tireless work in developing a robust range of projects and deepening relationships with our members. We are poised for continued strength and impact with the appointment of Laurie Patton, President of Middlebury College, as the Academy’s next President. A poet, humanist, and expert in South Asian culture and religion, Laurie brings a deep well of experience as a thought leader on democracy and pluralism, and as a seasoned executive at multiple institutions. We look forward to her arrival in January.

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

On March 30–31, 2023, the Academy gathered humanities scholars and leaders at the House of the Academy in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to mark the tenth anniversary of the release of The Heart of the Matter, the final report of the Academy’s Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences. The goal of the meeting was to reflect on what has happened to the humanities over the past decade and to consider future directions for the field. To provide context for the conversation, Richard H. Brodhead (who cochaired the Commission with the late John Rowe) offered the following reflections, describing what shaped their thinking a decade ago and what has changed in the years since.

Looking Back at Law's Century, recently published by Cornell University Press, describes the complex interaction of democracy, capitalism, and legal change in the twentieth century. "The last hundred years – what we might in retrospect characterize as 'law's century' – took us from the Progessive Era's optimism about law and social engineering to current concerns about our hyper-legalistic society, from Wilsonian idealism to the worldwide spread of democracy, the rule of law, and the idea of human rights," according to the volume's editors, Austin Sarat, Bryant Garth, and American Academy Fellow Robert A. Kagan.

A dinner discussion on DNA and Art: In Search of the Genome of Leonardo da Vinci, featuring Jesse H. Ausubel, director of the Program for the Human Environment at The Rockefeller University and introductory remarks from Kenneth Wallach (Central National Gottesman Inc.) who cochairs the New York Program Committee.