The Humanities Indicators is a nationally recognized source of nonpartisan information on the state of the humanities, providing researchers, policy-makers, journalists, humanities practitioners, and engaged citizens with better tools to answer basic questions about the past, present, and future of the field.

Less than one-third of American undergraduates major in the natural sciences, mathematics, or engineering. This project examined the goals of science requirements for nonscientists, and how students fulfill those requirements, in an effort to inform curriculum policies at higher education institutions.

This study investigated the rationale, the means, and the consequences of providing high-quality primary and secondary education to all the world's children.

In 1969, the American Council of Learned Societies, of which the Academy is a founding member, convened its annual meeting to examine confrontation and challenges to the value of scholarship in society, inspired by the dissident rebellions at institutions of higher education in 1968.

A group of scholars from the historical, psychological, psychiatric, and social science disciplines met in a series of seminars to explore the interplay between individual psychology and historical change.

Located around the globe but operated by American parent institutions, interdisciplinary American Overseas Advanced Research Centers provide essential support to American humanistic and social science scholars working in foreign countries.

In 1972, when the word “ethnicity” was first introduced to the Oxford English Dictionary, the Academy convened a conference with the goal of assessing this widespread phenomenon, which was becoming an important and explanatory factor in the political arena throughout the world.

In 1973, the Academy formed a planning committee to explore the development and creation in the United States of an institute for advanced humanistic studies, somewhat analogous to the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

This project provides an institutional history of higher education in California.

After World War II, the social sciences operated in a changed field, particularly in terms of their relations to the polity and the economy. This study examined whether the social sciences can credibly claim to perform an impartial role and how to maintain ethical integrity in social science scholarship.

As a member of the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO, the Academy formed a special committee to examine, and consider Academy action in response to, the “politicization” of UNESCO.

In 1969, during a time of great student unrest across the country, the Academy founded The Assembly on University Goals and Governance to study a series of issues in higher education that were not directly linked to the problems of disorder.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Academy organized several conferences and studies devoted to the history, origin, and development of fields of research, such as physics, molecular biology, and bioenergetics.

The Academy convened a group of business people, public officials, and scholars from the physical sciences, social sciences, and humanities to discuss changing expectations for the future of society and culture.

The Academy appointed a study group to examine the issues raised when American universities consider education, research, or service agreements with institutions in countries possibly involved in serious violations of human rights in general and, more specifically, of academic freedom.

In 1977, nearly twenty-five years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision found that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” the aftershocks were still affecting American society. The Academy convened an interdisciplinary study group to examine the post-Brown urban school integration experience and to consider solutions to ongoing education inequality in American classrooms.

In 1984, as China was reviving its long-neglected education system, a small delegation from the American Academy visited the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to help develop programs that will allow Chinese scholars to learn about developments in Western social science and humanistic disciplines and allow U.S. scholars to learn about scholarly and societal developments in China.

This project studied the influence of Paul Tillich⁠—a distinguished philosophical and cultural theologian and an eminent interpreter of the 20th century⁠—on contemporary life.

The focus of this study was to better understand the role of Confucianism - long thought to be incompatible with the spirit of capitalism - in industrialization.

For this project, the Academy co-sponsored a series of symposia and conferences to examine censorship from a variety of perspectives. In the resulting volume of essays, an interdisciplinary group of scholars analyzed efforts to regulate speech and examined the subsequent cultural implications.