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? The Spring 2019 issue of Dædalus, “Why Jazz Still Matters,” explores that very question.

This fall the Academy Archives embarks on a new project to clean, repair, rehouse, and digitize many important documents from the Academy's early years, as well as a unique collection of records to related to the family of Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford.

In recognition of his philanthropy and dedication to public service, business leader and entrepreneur Morton L. Mandel is presented with the Academy’s Scholar-Patriot Award.

Authors from Diverse Perspectives Try to Define Universal Education Goals in New Academy Publication

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?

When forced to decide between a career in biochemistry or psychology in the spring of 1950, Jerome Kagan chose the latter because of a gnawing puzzlement provoked by the observation that apparently sane people living in the same community held different beliefs about love, honesty, and whom was entitled to respect and whom to scorn.

Retired Supreme Court Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor will discuss current challenges faced by the federal and state courts in a climate of heightened partisanship, expensive election campaigns, and attacks on judicial independence.

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.

Released in June of 2013, The Heart of the Matter, the report of the American Academy’s Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences, has become an integral part of an ongoing national dialogue about the state of the humanities and social sciences in the United States.

Joseph Kannarkat and Norm Augustine, cochair of Academy project on New Models for U.S. Science and Technology Policy, discuss the project’s final report and what the U.S. can learn from China to improve its competitiveness in technology development.

The gap between the richest and poorest communities in the United States has grown significantly, as have differences in population growth, business development, and economic insecurity. The Academy explored this issue with in a conversation with entrepreneur Reid G. Hoffman, sociologist Katherine S. Newman, and founder of End Poverty in California Michael D. Tubbs. The event was inspired by the work of the Academy’s Commission on Reimagining Our Economy and its recommendations to build a people-first economy that ensures no Americans and no communities are left behind.

Temple Grandin discussed the education of students who have different kinds of minds, as well as her own upbringing and work experience as a woman with autism.

The Academy hosted a discussion about pressing issues facing the world in 2025. The event featured Kwame Anthony Appiah (New York University), Michael Froman (Council on Foreign Relations), and Adam Tooze (Columbia University) in conversation with Anne-Marie Slaughter (New America). Academy President Laurie L. Patton delivered the opening remarks. Transcript and video online.

Bert Emerson, a participant in a listening session in Spokane, wrote a guest column about the nation's greatest challenges and what gives him hope that Americans have the will to fix our democracy.

The Academy, in collaboration with the Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny (CARTA), hosted the Morton L. Mandel Public Lecture on “How Are Humans Different from Other Great Apes?” featuring Ajit P. Varki, Pascal Gagneux, Fred H. Gage, and Margaret J. Schoeninger.

Projects in the Education and the Development of Knowledge program area inform policy and practice in support of high-quality, lifetime educational opportunities for all Americans. The program area continues the Academy’s enduring focus on the vital role education and knowledge development play in our nation and in our world. From advancing equitable educational outcomes to leveraging new developments in the learning sciences and digital technologies to questioning how domestic and international scholarly work may be affected by advances in machine learning, the Education and the Development of Knowledge program area draws upon scholars and practitioners from various fields and disciplines to explore the conditions that foster the creation, transfer, and preservation of knowledge in a global context.

Residents of Alabama are asked “Is America headed in the right or wrong direction?” and reporter Tim Lockette wonders if the Academy’s recommendations for reinventing democracy could be a way forward.

Patricia Meyer Spacks reflects on the life and work of Mary Maples Dunn, co-director of the Visiting Scholars Program at the American Academy.