The American Academy of Arts and Sciences was founded in 1780, during the American Revolution, to provide guidance to a young nation. Throughout its 241-year history, the Academy’s leadership has seldom issued organizational statements, preferring to have its projects, studies, publications, and convenings present the best available thinking about the topics in question. However, when a situation arises – like climate change – that profoundly threatens the world, a call to action from the Academy’s Board of Directors is appropriate.

Responding to recent trends devaluing humanistic training, including a statement from a Mississippi state official, Beth Ann Fennelly argues for the importance of the humanities in higher education, citing a 2018 report issued by the Humanities Indicators.

At the National Press Club, members of the Academy's language commission met for a public discussion of their answers. Commission member Rubén Rumbaut, offered the core of the commission’s framing, “Ironically, despite the diversity of American languages, the United States has acquired the dubious designation of being a language graveyard...we have immigrants and children of immigrants not passing on their language skills.”

What do Americans think about the arts and artists? A recent national survey by the American Academy offers a few answers.

The American Academy’s Board of Directors issued a statement about climate change to stand explicitly with the scientific community and others to recognize the urgent need for a long-term commitment by every segment of our society to address this global issue.

On November 11 and 12, 2015, over 50 Judges and Justices, Chief Justices, legal scholars, and lawyers gathered at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Brought together by John Levi, Chairman of the Legal Services Corporation; Martha Minow, Dean of the Harvard Law School; and Lance Liebman, former Dean of the Columbia Law School, the group discussed the nation’s failure to provide legal services for low-income Americans.

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.

A new study by the Academy’s Humanities Indicators staff reveals significant changes in students’ majors from the time they begin their baccalaureate studies to when they complete a degree (if they do). The data focused on the cohort of students who began their studies in fall 2017 and their status as of June 2024.

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.

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.

As the United States approaches the 2024 presidential election, several journalists and commentators have been puzzled by one question: “Why do Americans seem so unhappy with an economy that appears to be doing so well?” Polls are influenced by many factors, but recent results show how pessimistic many Americans feel about the economy. And yet, judged by traditional economic metrics like the GDP or the Dow Jones, the economy is doing well. How do we explain this paradox?

Randy W. Schekman moderated a panel discussion on consensus and controversy in science with Jennifer Doudna, Richard A. Muller, and Pamela Ronald.

Robert J. Birgeneau to Lead American Academy Lincoln Project: Excellence and Access in Public Higher Education

Ernst Bamberg, Ed Boyden, Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, Gero Miesenböck, and Georg Nagel will receive a storied science prize in recognition of their extraordinary contributions related to the invention and refinement of optogenetics. The Rumford Prize has been awarded previously to Thomas Edison in 1895 for his work in electric lighting; Edwin Land in 1945 for his applications in polarized light and photography; Enrico Fermi in 1953 for his studies of radiation theory and nuclear energy; and Federico Capasso and Alfred Cho in 2015 for their contributions to the field of laser technology.

Robert H. Frank writes for the New York Times about income inequality and the justice gap, based on his longer essay in Daedalus issue on "Access to Justice."

Academy member Denis Feeney has spent the last few years trying to understand why the Romans developed a literature in their Latin language, when the balance of historical probability was against this happening.

The criminalization of immigrants in America has been a decades-long project advanced by Democrats and Republicans alike with Donald Trump's campaign a sharp turn toward explicit nativism. The essays in the Spring 2021 issue of Dædalus offer a bleak assessment of how we got here, but some still find room for optimism.