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.

“More people worldwide are being displaced from their homes for longer periods than ever before,” noted David Miliband, president and chief executive officer of the International Rescue Committee, at a gathering of Academy members and guests at the inaugural Jonathan F. Fanton Lecture in New York. Miliband, one of the foremost advocates for refugees and a leader in responses to global humanitarian and human rights crises, described the causes of today’s global refugee crisis and offered solutions, both simple and effective.

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.

As climate-driven extreme weather events continue to impact communities around the globe, researchers and policymakers are growing more interested in understanding connections between climate change and conflict. An interdisciplinary Academy discussion on global conflict and climate resulted in points of agreement, areas of caution, and suggested topics for future exploration. 

Over the past year, the Humanities Indicators of the American Academy (http://humanitiesindicators.org) have been offering evidence for many of the urgent questions facing the humanities field.

Academy Publications

The American Academy's Humanities Indicators project provides new indicators on Americans' dwindling engagement with books, the types of texts they are reading, changing attitudes about censorship, and student reading proficiency.

Members of the Catalyst Collaborative@MIT performed a staged reading of Chantal Bilodeau’s play SILA. The reading was followed by a panel discussion with Naomi Oreskes, Robert L. Jaffe, and playwright Chantal Bilodeau about the competing interests shaping the future of our planet.

On April 1, 2022, the Academy presented Henry Louis Gates, Jr. with the Don M. Randel Award for Humanistic Studies in recognition of his groundbreaking work as a scholar and public intellectual. The program, which was the Annual David M. Rubenstein Lecture, included remarks by Academy President David Oxtoby, the presentation of the award by Chair of the Academy’s Board Nancy C. Andrews, and a conversation between Gates and David M. Rubenstein. An edited version of the presentations and conversation follows.

The Summer 2020 issue of Dædalus, “Religion & Democracy,” guest-edited by Robert Audi, takes on the challenge of outlining standards that balance respect for both religion and democracy, and provide for their mutual flourishing. The volume addresses both institutional questions and the ethics of citizenship as bearing on how individuals, religious or not, may best regard their role in the political system in which they live.

From the Archives

Noteworthy

The Academy’s project on the Alternative Energy Future is working to identify societal barriers to the widespread adoption of new energy technologies and to assess how these barriers might be better understood and managed.

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.

Africa is at the center of the global water predicament and climatic upheaval. The Fall 2021 issue of Dædalus, “Water Security in Africa in the Age of Global Climate Change,” guest-edited by Allen Isaacman, Muchaparara Musemwa, and Harry Verhoeven, features fourteen essays that explore policy debates and conflicts over water use as well as the efforts to mitigate these tensions.

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.

In December, Commission on Accelerating Climate Action co-chair Chris Field and the Academy's John E. Bryson Program Director for Science, Engineering, and Technology Leo Curran presented the Commission’s final report, Forging Climate Solutions: How to Accelerate Action Across America, to the annual American Geophysical Union conference.

Arms trafficking has a long and influential history. At an Academy event held in Berkeley, California, historian Brian DeLay described how U.S. arms trafficking intervened at critical moments to destabilize Mexican governance. The program included commentary from historians Priya Satia and Daniel Sargent, as well as from political scientist Ron Hassner. The presentations explored how the history of arms trading may help to better understand the history of state-making and the power relations between the United States and the rest of the world.