Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post presents the recommendations in “Our Common Purpose” on social media and disinformation as key to restoring American democracy.

By Kimberlee Eberle-Sudré, Program Director of Education and the Development of Knowledge at the Academy

Among the 31 recommendations in the Academy's cross-partisan publication, Our Common Purpose, was a proposal to enlarge the House of Representatives to ensure better and more responsive representation for Americans across the country. The idea was explored in a "Vox, America Explained" video which featured the Academy's work.

PBS and the Academy are partnering for a PBS AMERICAN PORTRAIT storytelling project to develop a crowdsourced poem curated by Academy member and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey.

Stephen Heintz, cochair of the Academy’s Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship, says Biden’s single most important step in his first 100 days is to establish a White House Office for Democracy.

Over the past eighteen months, the Academy has partnered with the Northeast Document Conservation Center to repair, clean, and digitize six bound volumes of letters and other documents related to early Academy member and donor Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford) and his daughter, Sarah.

Commentary in the Berkshire Eagle by Binyamin Appelbaum, a member of the New York Times's editorial board, considers ways to address the power possessed by the owners of social media sites. Options presented include a recommendation for a public-interest mandate from the Academy's Our Common Purpose report.

In an article published in The Independent Ledger in Boston on February 26, 1781, the Academy wrote that “they request the Assistance of the Ingenious in every profession. Observations in Astronomy and Geography, will be of great use. Meteorological Observations and Experiments are much wanted.” By May 1781, the Academy had organized its activity into “subjects of study,” instructing that the “seventh class make meteorology their special object, observe the azimuth, meridional height, vertical direction and various phenomena of the Aurora borealis. . . .”

Harold Varmus, Susan R. Wente, Tania Baker, and Mark C. Fishman participated in a conference on ensuring the stability of the biomedical research enterprise in the United States. Richard H. Brodhead introduced the panel discussion, which was moderated by Nancy C. Andrews and Sally Kornbluth.

On October 24, 2024, the Academy’s San Diego Committee hosted a program on “Health and Our Oceans,” which featured atmospheric chemist and Academy member Kimberly A. Prather. Professor Prather discussed newly identified critical connections between rising pollution levels in coastal oceans and rivers and their far-reaching impacts on air quality and human health. She also described a recent study on local air and water quality issues in southern San Diego. The program included introductory remarks from Susan Taylor, Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology, Chemistry & Biochemistry at UC San Diego School of Medicine, and Margaret S. Leinen, Director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Vice Chancellor for Marine Sciences, and Dean of the School of Marine Sciences at UC San Diego. An edited version of Professor Prather’s presentation follows.

L. A. Times columnist Nicholas Goldberg includes the work of the Academy’s Commission on the Arts in his column supporting public spending on the arts in California.

After the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, and the nationwide unrest that followed, Academy President David Oxtoby shared some thoughts with staff about the Academy's responsibility to do more to recognize and address racism in America.

Howard Mumford Jones was president of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences from 1944 to 1951. He was instrumental in transforming the Academy into a national organization dedicated to the interdisciplinary analysis of broad-scale intellectual issues.

The recent financial crisis has exposed serious flaws in the relationship between corporate America and the larger society, but it has also provided an extraordinary opportunity to reexamine and rebuild that relationship for the new century. On November 30, 2009, Rajat K. Gupta and Roger W. Ferguson, Jr. discussed these issues at an American Academy of Arts & Sciences event in New York City entitled “Challenges to Business and Society in the 21st Century: The Way Forward.”

On November 22, 1788, the General Court of Massachusetts approved the Academy’s petition to hold a public lottery. Proceeds would go toward the purchase of a unique, grand model of the solar system for Harvard College.

On May 5–6, 1956, the Academy hosted a conference on “Science and the Modern World View–Toward a Common Understanding of the Sciences and the Humanities.” The conference, funded by the National Science Foundation, was held in honor of physicist Percy Williams Bridgman and mathematician and physicist Philipp G. Frank. At their request, the meeting was not a celebration of their individual work. Rather, it highlighted the discipline of the philosophy of science, which they both advanced. Specifically, the conference examined the history of a scientific worldview and its intersection with the humanities in the mid-twentieth century.

The Academy and the Center for Strategic and International Studies launched a new book -- The Fragile Balance of Terror: Deterrence in the Nuclear Age -- at a cohosted event in Washington D.C. featuring one of the volume's editors and multiple authors.

Alexander Graham Bell visited the Academy and demonstrated his invention of the telephone before members twice during 1876 in May and October...

A distinguished group of artists and leaders from all fields demonstrate the need for the humanities and social sciences to America’s future in a new film, "The Heart of the Matter," released today.