“Democracy is under siege.” So begins the Summer 2017 issue of Dædalus on “The Prospects & Limits of Deliberative Democracy.”

On April 11, 2019, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences presented the Rumford Prize to six scientists for the invention and refinement of optogenetics. The awardees are Ernst Bamberg, Professor and Director of the Department of Biophysical Chemistry at Max-Planck Institute of Biophysics; Edward Boyden, Y. Eva Tan Professor of Neurotechnology, Associate Professor of Biological Engineering and Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT’s Media Lab and McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and Co-Director of the MIT Center for Neurobiological Engineering; Peter Hegemann, Professor and Head of the Department for Biophysics at Humboldt University of Berlin; Gero Miesenböck, Waynflete Professor of Physiology and Director of the Center for Neural Circuits and Behavior at the University of Oxford; Georg Nagel, Professor at the University of Wuerzburg (Bavaria); and Karl Deisseroth, D. H. Chen Professor of Bioengineering and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. Lucia Rothman-Denes, A. J. Carlson Professor of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology at the University of Chicago, introduced the prize recipients and presented the award. Edward Boyden accepted the award on behalf of all the prize recipients. An edited version of his acceptance remarks appears below.

In 2002, the Academy’s Initiative on Humanities and Culture issued its first Occasional Paper, Making the Humanities Count–a study of the need for a systematic and sustained effort to collect data on the state of the humanities in the United States. The Academy took up the challenge, and on January 7, 2009, it launched a prototype set of statistics: the Humanities Indicators.

Barbara J. Meyer accepts the Francis Amory Prize and gives a brief presentation about the fundamentals of sex and death.

Alexei V. Filippenko discusses supernovae and the accelerating expansion of the universe.

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences hosted in May Integrating Environmental Justice and Philanthropy: Lessons and Opportunities as part of ongoing outreach for the recommendations in Forging Climate Solutions: How to Accelerate Action Across America.

A transcript from an interdisciplinary panel discussion on the importance of creativity in science, with participants highlighting how creativity and imagination fuel scientific discovery and how science inspires artistic expression. The conversation followed the presentation of the Rumford Prize to Andrea Ghez by Laurie Patton.

On October 6, 2018, the American Academy inducted its 238th class of Members at a ceremony held in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The ceremony featured readings from the letters of John and Abigail Adams by Katherine Farley and Jerry Speyer, a performance by André Watts, and presentations by Linda T. Elkins-Tanton, Huda Y. Zoghbi, Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, Robert Gooding-Williams, and David Miliband.

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.

As the Academy emerges from this difficult year, we have good news to share as well. Despite the challenges we have faced, our Academy community has remained active and vibrant.

In collaboration with the Ash Center at the Harvard Kennedy School, the Academy hosted a discussion on “Redistricting and Representation,” which included presentations by Gary King, Jamal Greene, and Moon Duchin. Chief Judge Patti Saris moderated the program.

A new publication, which emerged from the Academy's Our Common Purpose work, proposes alternatives to the “winner-take-all” system used in most U.S. elections. The proposed alternatives have the potential to reduce partisan divides and virtually eliminate gerrymandering.

On March 30, 2016, the Academy hosted a program on “The Poetry of Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg for Baritone and String Quartet” that featured a presentation by Bonnie Costello and a performance by David Kravitz, baritone, and the Arneis Quartet.

A CNN column about voting and equality features Academy recommendations for strengthening democracy - specifically to enlarge the House of Representatives - in the section titled "How to make the US more democratic"

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?

The bipartisan Academy commission that issued the Our Common Purpose report recommended using the commemoration of America’s 250th anniversary to develop shared narratives about our nation’s story. An article in the New York Times highlights a new tour at Monticello -- developed in collaboration with two OCP Champion organizations -- that invites reflections on today’s challenges through a historical lens.

The American Academy delivered its final report on the future of language education to the U.S. Congress yesterday, recommending “a national strategy to improve access to as many languages as possible for people of every region, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background.”

A panel discussion on Institutions of Democracy and the Public Good was the focus of the Academy's 2012 Induction Weekend, featuring Diane Wood, Governor Phil Bredesen, and Ambassador Karl Eikenberry alongside Judy Woodruff, Alex Jones, and Marty Baron. The discussion was moderated by Norman Ornstein.

Lassina Zerbo, Rose E. Gottemoeller, Siegfried Hecker, and Robert Rosner participated in a discussion on the prospects for ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and the challenges presented by nuclear testing.