On April 18, 2024, Kwame Anthony Appiah received the Academy’s Don M. Randel Award for Humanistic Studies. Established in 1975 as the Award for Humanistic Studies and renamed in 2017 in honor of musicologist Don M. Randel, the award recognizes outstanding contributions to humanistic scholarship. The award ceremony included opening remarks from Academy President David W. Oxtoby, a reading of the prize citation by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., acceptance remarks from Professor Appiah, and a conversation between Professor Appiah and journalist Margaret Sullivan. An edited transcript of the program follows.

Select Prizes and Awards to Members

Richard Brodhead, president of Duke University, addresses the future of liberal arts education.

On November 11, 2015, Diane P. Wood, Goodwin Liu, and David S. Tatel discussed issues of access to the justice system. The program, which served as the 2027th Stated Meeting and the Inaugural Distinguished Morton L. Mandel Annual Public Lecture, was streamed to gatherings of members in four cities around the country: New York, Washington, Chicago, and Berkeley. The program concluded the first day of a two-day Academy symposium on the state of legal services for low-income Americans, which brought together federal and state judges, lawyers, legal scholars, and legal aid providers concerned about the state of legal services for Americans.

On March 31, 1999, Jared Diamond presented a condensed version of his talk on "How to Get Rich."

Miranda Restovic and Sarah DeBacher of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities describes their organization’s efforts to bring rich, humanities-focused educational experiences to preschoolers, thereby expanding the traditional understanding of what a humanities organization does—and for whom.

William G. Thomas III, Anne Cong-Huyen, Angel David Nieves, and Jessica Marie Johnson engaged in a panel discussion on pedagogy in undergraduate digital humanities classrooms. The discussion, which was presented in collaboration with Emory University, was moderated by Erika Farr. Stephen G. Nichols and G. Wayne Clough provided national perspectives as respondents to the panel.

The 2015 Induction Ceremony included presentations by five new members: Phil S. Baran, Patricia Smith Churchland, Roland G. Fryer, Jr., Sally Haslanger, and Darren Walker.

Anna Deavere Smith is many things: an actress, playwright, author, and founding director of the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue at New York University, where she is also University Professor at Tisch School of the Arts. In 2019, she became a member of the Academy and was a featured speaker at the Annual David M. Rubenstein Lecture held during the Induction weekend. After performing two original pieces that combine art, commentary, and journalism, she joined David M. Rubenstein in conversation. Their discussion explored a wide range of topics, from auditions and growing up in Baltimore to memorization and the school-to-prison pipeline.

On March 20, 2024, the Academy’s University of Chicago Program Committee hosted an evening with historian Tara Zahra. Informed by her archival research and the themes in her most recent book, Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars, Professor Zahra discussed how the forces of early-twentieth-century global instability—the Spanish flu, the Great Depression, ethnonationalism, the development of both democracies and dictatorships—can help us better understand our own contemporary political moment. Following her presentation, she joined Academy President David W. Oxtoby in a conversation about the past, present, and future of our interconnected, yet increasingly divided, world. John Mark Hansen, a member of the Academy’s Board of Directors, opened the program. The event was organized as a Jonathan F. Fanton Lecture, in honor of the past president of the Academy whose career has been dedicated to solving global issues. Jonathan F. Fanton and his wife Cynthia were in attendance. An edited version of Professor Zahra’s remarks and her conversation with President Oxtoby follows.

On September 6, 2018, at Emory University, the American Academy hosted a Morton L. Mandel Public Lecture on “The Study of African American Women’s Writing: Pasts & Futures.” The program, which included a welcome from Dwight A. McBride, served as the 2069th Stated Meeting of the American Academy. Michelle M. Wright introduced the evening’s speakers – Frances Smith Foster, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, and Pellom McDaniels III – and moderated the discussion.

The overarching recommendation of the Academy's report on America's Languages was to establish “a national strategy to improve access to as many languages as possible for people of every region, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background—to value language education as a persistent national need.”

“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.

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.

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.

Judith Resnik, Jonathan Lippman, Carol S. Steiker, Susan S. Silbey, Jamal Greene, and Linda Greenhouse participated in a conversation on the function of courts in the United States.

On February 6, 2018, Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter S. Onuf participated in a discussion on Jefferson, race, and democracy, drawing from their recent book, “Most Blessed of the Patriarchs”: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination.

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 January 25, 2013,Thomas Levy described “cyber-archaeology” and the important role it plays in helping to promote excellence in the humanities and social sciences.