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.

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...

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences has received a $750,000 grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to advance the Academy's work on statistical indicators for the humanities.

A CNN column about voting and equality features Academy recommendations for strengthening democracy - specifically to enlarge the House of Representatives - in the section titled "How to make the US more democratic"

On October 7, 2017, the American Academy inducted its 237th class of Members at a ceremony held in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The ceremony included presentations by five new Members: Ursula Burns, James P. Allison, Heather K. Gerken, Jane Mayer, and Gerald Chan.

An article from UC Berkeley’s College of Computing, Data Science, and Society covers an Academy event featuring experts at Berkeley titled “Generative AI Is Terrific, But Is it Really Legal?” The coverage highlights the legal and economic issues at the intersection of artificial intelligence and creative endeavors.

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.

Deceased Members

A new interagency partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) will support the American Academy of Arts & Sciences’ Humanities Indicators project to assess the size and health of the nonprofit humanities, arts, and cultural sectors.

Following an introduction from Robert C. Post, Linda K. Kerber discusses her work as part of a new generation of historians who have begun to study law as a cultural formation that both reflects and forms the discursive construction of collective identity in society.

Henri was a highly respected business leader and entrepreneur, greatly admired for his energetic engagement in biotechnology, community, service, and philanthropy.

As officials assess the impact of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami on that country’s crippled nuclear power plants, a new publication issued today by the American Academy provides background on the cost, safety, and security attributes of the major nuclear reactor designs, as well as their properties with regard to refueling and fuel disposition requirements.

In 1860, zoologist-geologist Louis Agassiz and botanist Asa Gray, both members of the Harvard faculty, took part in a debate held at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on the recently published Origin of Species.

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.”

Citing a forthcoming Academy report, Neal Lane testifies in front of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and says America’s future as a global leader depends on a robust and expanding science and technology research and development agenda by the federal government.

Select Prizes and Awards to Members

White paper explores legal frameworks for regulation of nuclear, biological, and cyber technologies

Ben Klutsey, a member of the Academy's working group on defining civic culture, expands on key lessons from the working group's report on fortifying civic culture, including how Americans can promote habits of service, share narratives of common purpose, and engage in other activities that strengthen civic culture.