Frank Wilczek discussed the modern concept of substance and the nature of the Higgs particle following an introduction given by Jerome Friedman.

A challenge facing the United States is how to combine the good and bad of our history into shared narratives. Telling Our Nation’s Story, one of the recommendations of the Academy’s Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship, calls for communities to work toward a common narrative by engaging in honest conversations about the past in order to reckon with what divides us while uncovering what unites us. Participants in this virtual program brought a regional approach to a conversation across the Research Triangle.

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.

May R. Berenbaum presented at the fall Stated Meeting of the Midwest Center of the American Academy. The talk was a condensed and popularized version of her paper titled "Animal-Plant Warfare: Molecular Basis for Cytochrome P450-Mediated Natural Adaptation."

Now is the moment to think about the people, places, and practices of democracy, write Hollie Russon Gilman, Darshan Goux, and Elizabeth Youngling in this op-ed.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has unleashed a humanitarian catastrophe, but Ukraine is only the most visible example of contemporary conflicts subjecting populations to systematic violence and depriving them of life-saving humanitarian assistance. In Ethiopia, Sudan, Yemen, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the eroding purchase of international humanitarian law, combined with intensifying geopolitical competition and the rapidly changing character of modern warfare, have put enormous strain on humanitarian actors. An issue of Daedalus explores the conflicts and the implications.

Select Prizes and Awards to Members

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.

Since January when I began my tenure as President, I have viewed firsthand the Academy do what it does best: convene members and other experts from across disciplines and professions to address some of the most important challenges that face our nation and the world. In just my first month at the Academy, I participated in meetings about improving K-12 education, understanding the role of the arts in American life, and rethinking a humanitarian health approach to violent conflict.

The new national dashboard released by the Academy's Commission on Reimagining Our Economy, the CORE Score, is mined for data about Massachusetts in this piece by WGBH. The coverage also connects the wellbeing assessed in the CORE Score to recommendations in the Commission's final report.

While the scientific community understands the benefits of international scientific collaboration, risks of such collaboration to U.S. national security are now at the forefront of debate. Terry Magnuson examines the recommendations offered in “America and the International Future of Science,” a report from the Academy’s initiative to address Challenges for International Scientific Partnerships.

The two-day forum, part of a project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, led by the Freeman Spogli Institute’s Karl Eikenberry and Stephen Krasner, gathered experts to examine trends in civil wars and solutions moving forward.

The events of Induction Weekend 2019 feature artists, scholars, activists, and leaders in business, philanthropy, and public service.

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

There is no resource more central to life on Earth than water. It is essential to the survival of people, organisms, and economies; its availability is inextricably linked to humanity’s need for security, energy, food, and community. The Summer 2015 issue of Dædalus moves beyond the failures of our tried approaches to water management.

In the early 1800s, the Academy received reports of a sea serpent, described as 60 to 100 feet long, in what is now Maine’s Penobscot Bay. In 1810, upon hearing that the reports had been lost, minister and politician Alden Bradford, with the assistance of Lemuel Weeks, collected and presented to the Academy sworn statements of witnesses. In doing so, Bradford acknowledged, “Accounts of this sort, I am aware, should be received with caution.”

Danielle S. Allen and Stephen B. Heintz, cochairs of the Academy’s Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship, presented strategies to strengthen civic engagement at a virtual panel co-hosted by the Harvard Kennedy School.

Jazz: it has been called both cool and hot, earthy and avant-garde, intellectual and primitive. It is improvisational music touted for the freedom it permits its players, but in its heyday was largely composed and tightly arranged. It tells a story about race in America: not only because African American musicians were so central in its creation and African American audiences so important in their creative responses to it, but because whites played such a dominant role in its dissemination through records and performance venues and its ownership as intellectual and artistic property. But is jazz a relic of the past, or does it continue to have meaning and influence for today’s artists and audiences? And while it may still be present, does it still matter?