Despite evidence that points unmistakably to the workplace advantages of a well-rounded education, disciplines in the arts and humanities still lose ground in the national battle for curricular relevance.

Drawing largely on original research using federal data sets and the Gallup-Purdue Index survey of college alumni, the new report from the Humanities Indicators finds that college graduates with degrees from fields with below-average earnings are quite similar to graduates from other fields with respect to their perceived well-being.

The new issue of Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, explores the loss of trust in experts and institutions: what are the causes and consequences of the loss of confidence and can they be reversed?

Members Elected in 2021, by Class & Section

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

One of the recommendations for strengthening American democracy proposed in Our Common Purpose - the report of a bipartisan Academy commission - is to invest in civic education programs and professional development opportunities for educators in all communities. This article examines legislative progress at the federal, state, and local levels concerning civics education.

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences was founded by visionaries who foresaw that the nascent republic would benefit from the expertise of learned citizens to guide its development, health, and integrity through any challenges that may arise.

President Jimmy Carter and Republican former Senators Olympia Snowe (ME) and Alan Simpson (WY) joined a majority of Americans across the political spectrum to support a Constitutional Amendment - as proposed in the Academy's Our Common Purpose report - addressing the explosive rise in election spending and the civic distrust and division it generates. 

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.

In 1980, I began my fellowship in pediatric infectious diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. My mentor was Dr. Stanley Plotkin: the inventor of the RA27/3 strain of rubella vaccine – the one that by 2005 had eliminated the disease from the United States.

Since coming to the Academy as President in 2019, I have had the privilege of leading an organization that seeks to connect all forms of knowledge to help shape policy in the areas of American institutions; education and the development of knowledge; humanities, arts, and culture; global security and international affairs; and science, engineering, and technology.

Robert Ballard tells the story of his passionate career in ocean exploration and discusses the educational initiatives he has created to engage a new generation of scientists.

On November 15, 2016, the Academy’s San Diego Program Committee hosted Veerabhadran Ramanathan and David G. Victor for a discussion on the state of scientific understanding of climate change and the implications of this knowledge for the development of future policy.

A distinguished theoretical physicist, Herman Feshbach worked throughout his career to advance scientific freedom and East-West exchange—concerns that he brought to the international programs of the Academy.

Timothy J. Colton and George Breslauer gave a presentation on “Russia Beyond Putin,” the subject of the upcoming Spring 2017 issue of Dædalus.

Academy report includes a roadmap for storing spent nuclear fuel

The humanities, arts, and culture are woven through virtually every Academy program, in which artists and humanists add interdisciplinary breadth to projects in science, democracy, and security. However, the Academy also undertakes projects that put humanities, arts, and culture at the forefront–tracking and reporting data on the health of the sector through the Humanities Indicators, and working with leaders in the field to articulate the needs of the sector and their importance to a vital and thriving nation.

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.