The Global Security and International Affairs program area draws on the expertise of policy-makers, practitioners, and scholars to foster knowledge and inform innovative and more substantial policies to address crucial issues affecting the global community. Projects underway in this area engage with pressing strategic, development, and moral questions that underpin relations among people, communities, and states worldwide. Each initiative embraces a broad conception of security as the interaction among human, national, and global security imperatives. Project recommendations move beyond the idea of security as the absence of war toward higher aspirations of collective peace, development, and justice.

“A Night at the Museums” was conceived of and hosted by Academy members and Gainesville Representatives Pamela Soltis and Douglas Soltis (both, University of Florida). They wanted an event that would highlight the utility of the modern museum collection while connecting members from across the country. This program gave a behind-the-scenes look at museums in Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, California, and Oregon – all of which are associated with universities in the Academy’s network of Affiliate institutions. An edited version of select portions of the presentations and Q&A session follows.

Mark S. Schlissel, Mary Sue Coleman, Patrick Doyle, M. Roy Wilson, and Lou Anna K. Simon participated in a discussion at the University of Michigan about public research universities and their role in serving the public interest in Michigan.

At a meeting sponsored by the American Academy, the Royal Society, and the Carnegie Institution for Science, Wendy Freedman (Crawford H. Greenewalt Chair and Director of Carnegie Observatories at the Carnegie Institution for Science) and Martin Rees (Fellow of Trinity College; Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge; Astronomer Royal; and Visiting Professor at Imperial College London and at Leicester University) discussed what we know and do not know about the universe.

SELECT PRIZES AND AWARDS TO MEMBERS

From visual arts to jazz, theater to poetry, the opening program of the Academy’s 2019 Induction weekend celebrated the arts and humanities. The event included a video featuring artist Mark Bradford; a performance by composer, pianist, and singer/songwriter Patricia Barber; remarks about the power and importance of the performing arts from theater director and scholar Harry J. Elam, Jr.; a reading by playwright Donald Margulies from his play Sight Unseen; and remarks and readings by poet, writer, and foundation leader Elizabeth Alexander.

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

Academy members and guests attended a matinee performance of Robert Glaudini's The Poison Tree, in its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum. After the show, they adjourned to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for dinner and the Stated Meeting, presided over by Western Center Cochair Jack W. Peltason.

On September 17, 2015, at the Silver Center of Arts and Science at New York University, Matthew S. Santirocco moderated a panel discussion featuring Kevin Guthrie, Daphne Koller, and Nicholas Lemann.

On April 1, 2019, the American Academy and the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale presented their first joint public program, which featured a conversation between David Blight and Robert Stepto. The program, which served as the Academy’s Morton L. Mandel Public Lecture, included a welcome from Ian Shapiro. Crystal Feimster moderated the program.

The Academy’s Berkeley Committee hosted a panel discussion on generative AI (GenAI) that offered a technical overview of the technology and explored the legal and economic issues raised by the growing number of lawsuits challenging the legality of GenAI. The panel included Jennifer Chayes, Dean of the UC Berkeley College of Computing, Data Science, and Society; Pamela Samuelson, Professor of Law at UC Berkeley School of Law; and Abhishek Nagaraj, economist and Associate Professor at the Berkeley Haas School of Business. Goodwin Liu, Chair of the Academy’s Board of Directors, delivered welcome remarks. An edited transcript of the panelists’ presentations and discussion follows.

Immigration is not only where the people come from, and why they come, and whether they are forced to come; it's also how and, in the long run, whether they are received.

On November 15, 2016, the Academy’s San Diego Program Committee hosted Veerabhadran Ramanathan and David G. Victor for a discussion on the state of scientific understanding of climate change and the implications of this knowledge for the development of future policy.

On May 15, 2014, at the Academy’s 2008th Stated Meeting, five experts discussed how institutions protect against the threat of nuclear terrorism.

An article by Martha Nussbaum

On November 13, 2013, David F. Levi, Jack Fuller, Virginia A. Seitz, Harold Hongju Koh, and Mark L. Wolf discussed the legacy of Attorney General Edward H. Levi.

2106th Stated Meeting | April 20, 2022 | Virtual Event
Jonathan F. Fanton Lecture

On December 4, 2015, at the Georgetown University Law Center, the Academy hosted a panel discussion on “The Crisis in Legal Education” with Louis Michael Seidman, Robert A. Katzmann, Philip G. Schrag, Robin L. West, and Patricia D. White.

As part of the 2013 Induction weekend, Ken Burns (President of Florentine Films) and Ernest J. Moniz (U.S. Secretary of Energy) spoke about the challenges and opportunities for the arts and the sciences.