Deceased Members

The opening program of the 2023 Induction weekend included a reflection from actor and author John Lithgow, who encouraged the new members to engage with the Academy. He talked about his experience as a cochair of the Academy’s Commission on the Arts and shared a preview of his new television series on PBS—Art Happens Here—which grew out of the Academy’s work. The program also featured a conversation between David M. Rubenstein, Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of The Carlyle Group, and Sheila Johnson, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Salamander Collection, that illuminated aspects of Johnson’s childhood, her success in a range of business ventures, and her lifelong involvement in the arts. An edited version of their conversation follows.

Power in the workplace does not stop women’s exposure to sexual harassment. On the contrary, women with supervisory positions are harassed more than women employees. Daedalus authors Johanna Rickne and Olle Folke discuss the study addressed in their essay, “Sexual Harassment of Women Leaders.”

Major study by American Academy of Arts and Sciences seeks change in curriculum and assessment, commitment to funding public higher education, new ideas about the faculty role, and more.

Dysfunctional immigration policies implemented in recent decades have accelerated growth of the Latino population and racialized its members around the trope of illegality. Until 2016, the cultivation of White resentment relied on a dog-whistle politics of racially coded symbolic language, but with the election of Donald Trump, White nationalist sentiments became explicit.

The American Academy has a long-standing interest in arms control and international security studies, dating back to the late 1950s with the formation of the US Committee on the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs and the establishment in 1982 of the Academy's Committee on International Security Studies.

Climate change, soil erosion, human rights, Indigenous peoples, and “fixing” our democracy — the class speakers at the 2019 Induction Ceremony addressed major issues facing the world today, with calls to action and calls for change. Following a reading from the letters of John and Abigail Adams by humanitarian Jane Olson and attorney Ronald Olson, newly elected members spoke passionately about their life’s work. The ceremony featured presentations from paleoclimatologists Ellen Mosley-Thompson and Lonnie G. Thompson; microbiologist Jo Handelsman; former United Nations diplomat Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein; historian Margaret Jacobs; and lawyer and advocate Sherrilyn Ifill. An edited version of their presentations follows.
2083rd Stated Meeting | October 12, 2019 | Cambridge, MA

A reflection on work done to advance democratic renewal rooted in the recommendations of the Our Common Purpose report, issued by a bipartisan Academy Commission in 2020.

The Academy’s Berkeley Committee hosted a panel discussion on generative AI (GenAI) that offered a technical overview of the technology and explored the legal and economic issues raised by the growing number of lawsuits challenging the legality of GenAI. The panel included Jennifer Chayes, Dean of the UC Berkeley College of Computing, Data Science, and Society; Pamela Samuelson, Professor of Law at UC Berkeley School of Law; and Abhishek Nagaraj, economist and Associate Professor at the Berkeley Haas School of Business. Goodwin Liu, Chair of the Academy’s Board of Directors, delivered welcome remarks. An edited transcript of the panelists’ presentations and discussion follows.

A robust system of publication exchanges existed among societies in the 18th and 19th centuries. From this the Academy retains a selection of publications, such as an illustrated volume of the "Flora Batava".

Courts have long called upon experts making scientific claims to inform legal proceedings. As the range of scientific knowledge has expanded, so too have questions and challenges about the role and basis of claims of scientific expertise. For instance, how should courts respond when scientific experts do not agree?

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.

American Academy of Arts and Sciences Sponsors International Conference to Examine Security, Safety, and Nonproliferation Issues

As part of the Academy’s 2018 Induction weekend, Sonia Sotomayor (Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court) participated in a conversation with David M. Rubenstein. The program, which served as the Academy’s 2072nd Stated Meeting, was the second Annual David M. Rubenstein Lecture.

The Academy’s new strategic framework presents four animating principles and seven strategies that are designed to ensure that the Academy continues to produce high-quality, interdisciplinary work that addresses urgent societal challenges. In 2025, the Academy’s programmatic work laid the groundwork for new projects and initiatives that will implement this framework and built on ongoing efforts to increase impact and raise the visibility of the institution with external audiences. These audiences include policymakers at the federal, state, and local level; leaders in philanthropy, higher education, nonprofit organizations, and business; scholars and students; advocacy groups; professional groups and practitioners; and the public.

Grants will support the Academy’s Humanities Indicators (www.HumanitiesIndicators.org), the first comprehensive collection of statistical data about the humanities in the United States.

The Academy’s New Haven Program Committee, in partnership with Yale University’s MacMillan Center, hosted a conversation on national and international policies for slowing global warming that featured William Nordhaus (Yale University), recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. The program included remarks from Pinelopi Goldberg (Yale University; formerly, The World Bank Group) and Scott Barrett (Columbia University) as well as introductions from Steven Wilkinson (Yale University) and David Oxtoby (American Academy of Arts & Sciences).

The framers of the U.S. Constitution intended the House of Representatives to be “the People’s House.” For decades, the House grew as the nation grew. Then, in 1929, Congress capped the size of the House at 435 seats. A new Academy report assesses the impacts and alternatives with a proposal for enlarging the House now.