In 2002, the Academy’s Initiative on Humanities and Culture issued its first Occasional Paper, Making the Humanities Count–a study of the need for a systematic and sustained effort to collect data on the state of the humanities in the United States. The Academy took up the challenge, and on January 7, 2009, it launched a prototype set of statistics: the Humanities Indicators.

Alexei V. Filippenko discusses supernovae and the accelerating expansion of the universe.

This online data set – the first of its kind – attracted extensive attention in the news media and in the blogosphere and the website received more than 250,000 hits originating from 38 countries. The prototype includes 74 indicators and more than 200 tables and charts.

Richard Saller, Elaine Treharne, Franco Moretti, Joshua Cohen, and Michael A. Keller discussed the humanities in the context of rapidly developing new technologies.

Barbara J. Meyer accepts the Francis Amory Prize and gives a brief presentation about the fundamentals of sex and death.

While much of the discussion about the state of the humanities tends to focus on the declining number of students majoring in the humanities, the health of the field relies on a much wider array of practices. The American Academy’s Humanities Indicators project has been exploring this wider frame of humanities activity by compiling data from federal sources and conducting the first national survey about the health of the field.

The American Academy's Humanities Indicators project provides new indicators on Americans' dwindling engagement with books, the types of texts they are reading, changing attitudes about censorship, and student reading proficiency.

Geoffrey R. Stone moderated a conversation with journalist Judith Miller, Judge Richard A. Posner, and author Gabriel Schoenfeld about the balance between freedom of the press and national security. Each panelist offered his or her perspective on bridging legal and ethical issues.

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

"Early encounters with poverty and harsh conditions played a major role in fueling my research on child maltreatment. I have always preferred addressing complexity over simplicity, and this has led to a multilevel approach in my research."

As global temperatures rise and extreme weather events become more common, nations face unprecedented safety and security challenges. While communities strive to protect themselves from the harmful impacts of climate change, each measure taken to increase perceived safety can have unintended consequences. As we surpass the 1.5°C threshold outlined in the 2015 Paris Agreement, the question remains: how can we ensure that our short-term security goals are aligned with climate scientists’ mitigation recommendations?

Institutions are critical to our personal and societal well-being. They facilitate relationships; they regulate behavior. They develop and disseminate knowledge, enforce the law, keep us healthy, and uphold social and religious norms.

It’s 8 am on a sunny day in Miami, Florida, and the former chair of Shell is discussing mitigation with Indigenous leaders over arepas. Nearby, a reverend and youth activists chat about sea walls as they enjoy their coffee outside in the 70-degree weather. The diversity of these individuals, who are members of the Academy’s Commission on Accelerating Climate Action, speaks not only to the convening power of the Academy, but also to the growing interest in climate from sectors across America.

"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.

Some notable patterns have emerged in a series of surveys surveys asking about public engagement with various types of humanistic and artistic content.

The Academy’s Francis Amory Prize recognizes major contributions to the field of reproductive biology and was first awarded in 1940. Over the years, the prize recipients have reflected the increasing complexity and remarkable scientific progress in the field of reproductive biology.