The Academy convened a workshop in Chicago to discuss how a regional working group of state, local, and university leaders from the plains states could help implement the recommendations from the Academy’s recent report.

This fall the Academy Archives embarks on a new project to clean, repair, rehouse, and digitize many important documents from the Academy's early years, as well as a unique collection of records to related to the family of Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford.

"Science & the Legal System," the Fall 2018 issue of Dædalus, Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, features thirteen essays on topics including the state of the forensic sciences, expert testimony in court, the role of science in abortion law, neuroscience and law, and reforms to the U.S. adversarial system.

The closing program of the Academy’s 2025 Induction weekend featured a presentation by new member David Dunning on the psychology of overconfidence and its influence on decision-making, followed by a conversation with Academy President Laurie L. Patton. An edited transcript of the presentation and conversation follows.

Select Prizes and Awards to Members

Select Prizes and Awards to Members

States across the country took steps to advance and impede recommendations in the Academy's crosspartisan publication, Our Common Purpose: Reinventing American Democracy for the 21st Century. Learn more about which issues - including civics education, redistricting commissions, and voting regulations - were addressed and where.

In recent months, the media has been filled with reports of colleges and universities nationwide cutting humanities programs, at institutions ranging from large state flagships (such as West Virginia University) to smaller liberal arts colleges (such as Simmons and Lasell Universities). To clarify some of the choices involved in these decisions, the Academy’s Humanities Indicators project is releasing a series of reports on the state of the humanities in each of the fifty states and the District of Columbia. These reports demonstrate the depth of the challenges facing the humanities (with the numbers of humanities degrees declining in all but three states), but they also provide resources to counter some of the prevailing narratives about career outcomes for graduates in the humanities.

Sheldon Pollock explores the fate of philology amid far-reaching social and technological developments.

One of the recommendations for strengthening American democracy proposed in Our Common Purpose - the report of a bipartisan Academy commission - is to move to a system of proportional representation where elected seats in the U.S. House of Representatives are based on the share of votes each party or candidate receives. This article examines legislative progress at the federal and state levels concerning proportional representation.

The Academy holds virtual events as well as in-person events around the country and the world that bring members, representatives of the Affiliates, and others together to explore topics of national and global concern.

Rebecca Sandefur, cochair of Academy project on access to justice, believes America needs a new model for handling everyday legal issues.

By Maggie Boyd, Associate Archivist at the Academy

A profound lack of awareness of the unique, sovereign, and central role that Native Americans have played in the United States persists. And there is little recognition of how the knowledge of Indigenous people could contribute to a better shared future.

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.

Miranda Restovic and Sarah DeBacher of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities describes their organization’s efforts to bring rich, humanities-focused educational experiences to preschoolers, thereby expanding the traditional understanding of what a humanities organization does—and for whom.

At the 302nd Meeting of the Academy on December 7, 1847, an Academy committee submitted its opinions on the proposed plan for the Smithsonian Institution...

The Commission on Opportunities After High School held illuminating listening sessions with high school and college students, K-12 administrators and teachers, higher education administrators and faculty, employers, philanthropic leaders, and community partners. The insights shared will guide the commissioners in their work to ensure that all students can thrive.

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.