A distinguished theoretical physicist, Herman Feshbach worked throughout his career to advance scientific freedom and East-West exchange—concerns that he brought to the international programs of the Academy.

The White House’s proposed budget cuts to language and exchange programs will make America less able to communicate with and understand our allies and potential adversaries abroad, argues Karl Eikenberry, citing Academy report.

In October 2023, Academy President David Oxtoby announced his decision to step down as president of the Academy in June 2024, after more than five years of service.

New Volume of Essays from the American Academy Examines the Teaching of Evidence-Based Decision Making

The Legacy Recognition Program, initiated in 2024, is an important part of the Academy’s overall effort to address and reconcile its history regarding racism, sexism, and inequality. The program highlights the contributions of scholars, researchers, writers, artists, business leaders, community leaders, and others whose accomplishments have been overlooked or undervalued due to their race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation.

The recent financial crisis has exposed serious flaws in the relationship between corporate America and the larger society, but it has also provided an extraordinary opportunity to reexamine and rebuild that relationship for the new century. On November 30, 2009, Rajat K. Gupta and Roger W. Ferguson, Jr. discussed these issues at an American Academy of Arts & Sciences event in New York City entitled “Challenges to Business and Society in the 21st Century: The Way Forward.”

Five international academies call for more investment in language education, to increase access to and diversity of languages spoken in the respective academies’ national borders, including Indigenous languages.

Academy projects in Science, Engineering, and Technology seek to strengthen the capacity of science, engineering, and technology to improve the common good. Leveraging the diverse expertise of its members and a wide network of external specialists, the Academy conducts in-depth studies to assess the implications of scientific and technological progress. These studies inform actionable policy recommendations for stakeholders across government, academia, the nonprofit sector, and industry.

Danielle Allen shares how her family’s history of civic engagement inspires her belief in America’s constitutional democracy.

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.

Alexander Graham Bell’s paper “Researches in Telephony” was presented at a Stated Meeting of the Academy on May 10, 1876. In it, he considers the “three varieties of currents”–intermittent, pulsatory, and undulatory–that produce telephonic effects, and he also describes one of his experiments.

The final report was released on February 28, 2017, during a series of events in Washington, D.C.

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...

On November 26, 2018, Nicholas Kristof (a columnist for The New York Times) spoke at a gathering of Academy Members and guests in New York City about journalists in the age of Trump. He also shared a preview of his forthcoming book on dysfunction in America after fifty years of wrong policy turns.

The Academy’s larger projects, like the Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education and The Public Face of Science, are designed to help influence the intellectual life of the country – by providing new ideas, recommending new ways to address challenges, and calling attention to new knowledge.