In 2015, the American Musicological Society gave the Noah Greenberg Award to musicologist Jessie Ann Owens and the vocal ensemble Blue Heron, directed by Scott Metcalfe, for their project to produce the world premiere recording of Cipriano de Rore’s landmark I madrigali a cinque voci (Venice, 1542). On May 3, 2018, Owens spoke at the Academy about Cipriano’s music; following her presentation, Blue Heron performed a selection of madrigals drawn from his 1542 publication.

The Academy is launching the Our Common Purpose Communities Project - a national coalition of municipalities committed to strengthening American democracy. Lexington, Kentucky is the first city in the nation to join this effort and identify two recommendations from the Our Common Purpose report to advance at the local level.

New report will be featured at the nation’s preeminent policy forum for state and federal energy policymakers, the 2012 National Electricity Forum.

Few need to be told that the academic humanities have been beset by challenges over the past fifteen years, but the evidence tends to be scattered. To provide a clearer picture of the state of the field, the Academy’s Humanities Indicators project recently released the results from a new national survey of humanities departments in fourteen humanities and humanities-adjacent disciplines, the fourth such survey since 2008. Drawing on responses from more than two thousand department chairs, the report demonstrates both the challenges the field experiences today and the resilience of many departments in the face of those difficulties.

On November 7, esteemed panelists Samuel Kortum, Paul Kennedy, Ian Shapiro, Jing Tsu, and Arne Westad were tasked with answering two monumental questions: can we fix the broken global order, and if so, how? Frances McCall Rosenbluth moderated the event, organized by the Academy's New Haven Program Committee.

A new publication from the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the Russian Academy of Sciences is released. Its purpose is to inform policymakers who will shape the relative safety or danger of the future international nuclear environment.

Robert Ballard tells the story of his passionate career in ocean exploration and discusses the educational initiatives he has created to engage a new generation of scientists.

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.

On March 30, 2016, the Academy hosted a program on “The Poetry of Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg for Baritone and String Quartet” that featured a presentation by Bonnie Costello and a performance by David Kravitz, baritone, and the Arneis Quartet.

The class speakers at the Induction Ceremony explored several themes, including the value of curiosity and the unexpected; strategies to prevent scientific failures with harmful consequences; the role of the social sciences in addressing the urgent challenges of today; the processes of transformation and translation; and how openness fosters innovative and sustainable problem-solving. The ceremony featured presentations from theoretical astrophysicist Charles F. Gammie, research ecologist Helene Muller-Landau, lawyer and legal scholar Daniel E. Ho, writer and translator Jhumpa Lahiri, and economist and nonprofit leader Cecilia A. Conrad. An edited version of their presentations follows.

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences has received a $750,000 grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to advance the Academy's work on statistical indicators for the humanities.

What would it take to pull American politics out of the fire and make Americans feel, in any real sense, that we are all in this together? Evan Osnos, in The New Yorker, cites the recommendations in Our Common Purpose as a possible path forward.

Lawrence Goldstein moderated a panel discussion about scientific advances and their impact on society with J. Craig Venter, Lisa Madlensky, and John H. Evans at the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine in La Jolla, California.

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 U.S. must make competence in foreign languages an urgent economic, national security, and educational priority. Glenn Altschuler and David Wippman argue for increased language instruction, citing the Academy report on America’s Languages.

A bipartisan commission issues 31 recommendations to strengthen America’s institutions and civic culture to help a nation in crisis emerge with a stronger democracy.

A statement from the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, approved April 2025.

Building on America’s 250-year-old commitment to knowledge, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences announces the leaders in academia, the arts, industry, journalism, philanthropy, policy, research, and science elected in 2026.