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.

Free speech makes no distinction about quality; academic freedom does. Are all opinions equally valid in a university classroom? Joan Wallach Scott speaks about academic freedom after accepting the Talcott Parsons Prize.

The Academy's Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences includes a group of prominent business, government, and academic leaders, artists, and scholars.

Criticism of the humanities seems commonplace among policymakers. That is in the face of contrary evidence including a recent study by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences showing that humanities graduates have similar rates of employment and job satisfaction than those in other fields.

Prefatory note from Academy President Jonathan Fanton in the Bulletin inviting members to read about the work of the Academy and hoping they discover that members are engaged in the “positive programs” that Howard Mumford Jones imagined.

The Spring 2018 issue of Dædalus, “Unfolding Futures: Indigenous Ways of Knowing for the Twenty-First Century,” offers Native and non-Native voices on subjects ranging from political movements, adaptive leadership, and representational politics to the production of scientific knowledge, the ethics of bioscience, and language preservation.

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.

The opening program of the 2023 Induction weekend included a reflection from actor and author John Lithgow, who encouraged the new members to engage with the Academy. He talked about his experience as a cochair of the Academy’s Commission on the Arts and shared a preview of his new television series on PBS—Art Happens Here—which grew out of the Academy’s work. The program also featured a conversation between David M. Rubenstein, Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of The Carlyle Group, and Sheila Johnson, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Salamander Collection, that illuminated aspects of Johnson’s childhood, her success in a range of business ventures, and her lifelong involvement in the arts. An edited version of their conversation follows.

A new report from the American Academy of Arts & Sciences highlights the national civil justice gap by examining the causes of the problem and recommending innovative ways to address it.

The new issue of Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, explores the loss of trust in experts and institutions: what are the causes and consequences of the loss of confidence and can they be reversed?

The new issue of Dædalus features 18 “emerging voices” – essays on a variety of topics as well as poems by five winners of the Academy’s Poetry Prize in Honor of May Sarton. The essays draw from anthropology, philosophy, political science, and history, and take up both theoretical and practical issues.

New analysis from the Academy's Humanities Indicators project shows dramatic decreases in open positions for professors. Health professions faculty jobs, once equal in number to those in humanities, now far outnumber them.

Members Elected in 2021, by Class & Section

The Humanities Indicators, a project of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, is a nationally recognized source of nonpartisan information about the humanities. The Indicators are available to the public. The information provided is used by journalists and decision-makers to understand and convey the state of the humanities for a range of audiences and purposes—including an array of examples compiled here.

The Academy's Commission on Reimagining Our Economy (CORE) is rethinking the values, policies, narratives, and metrics that shape the nation’s political economy. Rather than focus on how the economy is doing, the Commission seeks to direct a focus onto how Americans are doing. As part of this work, the Academy hosted a conversation with U.S. Representative Jim Himes, Chair of the House Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth and U.S. Representative Bryan Steil, the Ranking Member of the Committee.

For 240 years, the nation has looked to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to offer wisdom and insight into the most profound issues of the time. In 1780, that was the formation of a free republic. In the 1850s, it was understanding the changing natural environment through the theory of evolution. In 1960, it was the creation and exploration of a field called arms control – in fact, the Academy coined that term. Today, it includes such questions as how we can sustain the dream of American democracy in the face of widening divides; and how as citizens of our planet we can respond to environmental change and its implications for migration, conflict, public health, and natural resources in order to provide for a more promising global future.

The Academy is engaged in a number of projects, studies, and meetings that, when taken together, support the quality education and informed exchange that shape a healthy and inclusive democratic society. Just recently the Academy announced a Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship

There are many rights that Americans living in poverty can’t access simply because they can’t afford a lawyer. This includes rights in housing, veterans’ benefits, disability access and many other areas of our civil justice system. This is called the access to justice gap, and it’s one of the most urgent — and under-discussed — civil rights issues of our time.

A $100 Million Campaign for the American Academy of Arts & Sciences