Select Prizes and Awards to Members

It is with profound sadness that the Academy notes the death of former Academy President Leo L. Beranek on October 10, 2016, at age 102. Dr. Beranek served as President from 1989 to 1994. He was an active and devoted member of the Academy.

John Kaag describes his time as a Visiting Scholar at the Academy (2007-2008).

The Academy, in partnership with the Open Research Community Accelerator (ORCA) and the Aspen Institute Science & Society Program, launched the Modernizing Academic Appointment and Advancement (MA3) Challenge. The initiative invites U.S. colleges and universities to transform academic hiring, review, promotion, and tenure practices.

By Maggie Boyd, Associate Archivist at the Academy

Noteworthy

Saving democracy might require mandatory voting — and Massachusetts can lead the way. Miles Rapoport, of the Academy's Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship, and Alex Keyssar make the case for universal voting.

Paul Wise will cochair the latest Academy project on “Rethinking the Humanitarian Health Response to Violent Conflict,” designed to help define new strategies for the provision of essential health services in areas of violent conflict.

Elizabeth J. Perry explains the means by which the Chinese Communist party-state maintains campus calm, despite the many unpopular and potentially unsettling higher education reforms.

The crafters of the Constitution expected the size of the House to grow as the U.S. population increased. Citing the American Academy report on “The Case for Expanding the House of Representatives,” Kevin Kosar calls for Capitol Hill to consider the proposition.

Established in 1958 to recognize distinguished achieve­ment in the field of literature, the Emerson-Thoreau Medal is awarded to an individual for their overall literary achievement. The first recipient of the award in 1958 was poet Robert Frost (elected to the Academy in 1931).

A new study from the American Academy's Humanities Indicators project reveals trends among U.S. residents, and the impact of respondents’ political leanings, socioeconomic status, gender, and race.

Arms trafficking has a long and influential history. At an Academy event held in Berkeley, California, historian Brian DeLay described how U.S. arms trafficking intervened at critical moments to destabilize Mexican governance. The program included commentary from historians Priya Satia and Daniel Sargent, as well as from political scientist Ron Hassner. The presentations explored how the history of arms trading may help to better understand the history of state-making and the power relations between the United States and the rest of the world.

On May 4, 1780, Massachusetts's legislative body the General Court of Massachusetts approved the Academy's charter by passing an Act incorporating the Academy...

On January 7, 2019, the Academy published the first open-access issue of Dædalus in the journal’s sixty-four-year history. “Access to Justice,” the Winter 2019 issue, is a multidisciplinary examination of the national crisis in legal services, from the challenges of providing quality legal assistance to more people, to the social and economic costs of an of- ten unresponsive legal system, to the opportunities for improvement offered by new technologies, professional innovations, and fresh ways of thinking about the crisis.

Select Prizes and Awards to Members

Vanesha Pravin, a lecturer in UC Merced’s Merritt Writing Program, receives prestigious May Sarton Prize for Poetry from the American Academy.

Recent business scandals reveal a disturbing breakdown of values in corporate America. A new book from the American Academy examines the failure of “gatekeepers” – corporate directors, auditors, regulators, lawyers, investment bankers, and business journalists – to stand between corporate misconduct and the public interest.