On October 1, 2011, the American Academy inducted its 231st class of Fellows and Foreign Honorary Members at a ceremony held in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The ceremony included presentations by five new members: Frances Hamilton Arnold, David Conrad Page, Sir Adam Roberts, Annette Gordon-Reed, and William I. Miller.

Ronald Ehrenberg assesses the merits of the society job advertisements as data for measuring trends in academic employment for the humanities and offers some guidance on how they should be read.

An event at the Academy explored and expanded upon essays in the new volume, The Fragile Balance of Terror: Deterrence in the Nuclear Age. Authors, other experts, and audience members in Cambridge and online considered how unpredictable leadership, domestic unrest, volatile states, and rapid technological advancements are changing the new nuclear era.

How the English department at Washington University at St. Louis reversed its enrollment slide and reinvigorated graduate training.

Select Prizes and Awards to Members

In an effort to draw attention to the extent of the humanities at two-year colleges, the Academy's Humanities Indicators conducted a national survey of community colleges and today releases the findings.

The Commission on Reimagining Our Economy issues final report and new dashboard in its efforts to advance an American economy that is centered on working for the people who make it work.

The closing program of the Academy’s 2025 Induction weekend featured a presentation by new member David Dunning on the psychology of overconfidence and its influence on decision-making, followed by a conversation with Academy President Laurie L. Patton. An edited transcript of the presentation and conversation follows.

On June 6, 2012, Internet pioneers Tom Leighton, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and David D. Clark discussed the future of the Web. The meeting, presented in collaboration with the Royal Society and the British Consulate-General, was the inaugural program in a lecture series on ‘GREAT Science,’ organized by the U.K. government’s Science and Innovation Network to profile international science excellence.

A list of all active Members, arranged by Class and Section, Affiliation, or Year of Election, is available on the Academy’s website at www.amacad.org/directory.

Martha Abbot, member of the Academy's Commission on Language Learning, speaks to Wisconsin Public Radio about language learning and global education.

The ASTC blog dives into the final report from the Public Face of Science initiative on Priorities for the Future, offering an overview and several important takeaways.

Instituted incautiously, the public humanities can threaten faculty speech and encourage cash-chasing. Feisal G. Mohamed discusses how getting it right will require structural change on the American campus — and some institutional investment in humanities departments.

The paper discusses the implications for Russia and China of current U.S. military plans to develop missile-defense systems and to seek military control of outer space.

Over the last few years, organizations across the United States – corporations, universities, and nonprofits like the American Academy – have begun to reflect on their ties to slavery, Native genocide, and other troubling elements of American history. The Academy’s virtual event on “Reckoning with Organizational History” explored why historical self-examination matters and what can be gained from these studies.

Members of the Catalyst Collaborative@MIT performed a staged reading of Paradise, a play by Laura Maria Censabella. The program included a panel discussion featuring Paula T. Hammond, Rebecca Saxe, and Saba Valadkhan.

Private and public pushes to increase STEM education have given rise to new concerns about the value of a liberal arts education. Humanities Indicators reports that the number of bachelor’s degrees in the humanities that were earned in 2015 was down nearly 10 percent from three years earlier.

The closing program of the Academy’s 2024 Induction weekend featured a presentation by new member André Fenton about the science and stimuli of memory, followed by a conversation with incoming Academy President Laurie L. Patton. An edited transcript of the presentation and conversation follows.

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