To address a deepening crisis in the lives of America’s children, the Academy organized a steering committee to explore how the Academy could increase the nation’s commitment to and investment in children.

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.

Meeting the Challenges of the New Nuclear Age examines some of the possible escalation pathways that could lead one or more nuclear weapons states to use nuclear weapons and aims to articulate a set of recommendations for de-escalating possible nuclear crises mostly involving the United States and its allies.

Public colleges and universities are key engines of economic growth, innovation, and upward mobility. This project explored strategies to preserve the strength and diversity of institutions of higher education.

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.

The Academy designed this study to act as a roadmap for transportation policy-makers, students, and concerned citizens. Calling for changes in policies and social habits, the resulting report offered strategies to minimize and resolve the problems raised by the increasing use of automobiles in urban areas.

In collaboration with the Royal Society of Canada, the Academy sponsored a symposium in 1976 in Quebec to discuss the revolutionary tradition in Canada and America, and how each nation has dealt with revolutionary goals in the context of contemporary issues.

New Dilemmas in Ethics, Technology and War is a three-year study exploring the intricate, rapidly evolving relationship between advancements in military technology and the moral and ethical dilemmas that new technologies pose for states, international organizations, and global society. 

A follow up to an earlier Academy study titled “Environmental Change and Acute Conflict,” this project examined how state capacity influences governmental responses to environmental scarcities, and potential subsequent conflict, in developing countries.

This project attempted to deal constructively with the principal issues raised by the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). The resulting report, initially published as a double-issue of Dædalus, does not reach conclusions about the desirability or feasibility of the SDI; rather, it presents favorable, opposing, and skeptical views about the relevant scientific, technological, strategic, and political issues involved.

This project convenes interdisciplinary experts to identify the grand challenges in digital mental health, including policy recommendations for ensuring that AI and other emerging technologies shape mental health diagnosis and treatment ethically and equitably.  

This project responded to growing concern over new developments in the Soviet-American nuclear competition. The Academy convened a conference to examine the emerging belief that the present second-strike, and thus deterrent, capabilities of missile-carrying nuclear submarines could be eroded by technological advances in strategic antisubmarine warfare.

The Forum, a collaboration of higher education leaders and scholars, launched in 1984 and moved to the Academy in 2022. The Higher Education Forum is an opportunity for the Academy to provide leadership and learning on pressing issues in higher education with a cross-disciplinary and cross-sector approach that draws on the strengths of its members and Affiliates.

The Academy co-sponsored a multidisciplinary symposium focused on the technical, political, and economic issues surrounding multinational control of the nuclear reactor fuel cycle. The resulting volume evaluates the advantages and disadvantages of placing reprocessing facilities under international or multinational control.

This project brought together American and Japanese scholars and decision-makers to discuss the security problems of East Asia and the Western Pacific. Participants met five times over several years, in the United States and in Japan.

The Academy organized a multidisciplinary study group to examine the historical evolution of the U.S. corporation, changes in structure and control, the social organization of corporations, the role of the board of directors, and the corporation’s responsibility to its workforce and to society as a whole.

Challenges for International Scientific Partnerships aimed to articulate the benefits of international collaboration and recommend solutions to the most pressing challenges associated with the design and operation of partnerships. This initiative sought to identify policy recommendations and best practices to mitigate challenges for international science collaborations, including physical facilities, distributed networks, and peer-to-peer partnerships.

This Academy-organized symposium brought together more than 30 scientists, scholars and public officials, from developed and developing nations, to discuss how social values do and should influence technology choice by nations and by groups of nations.

The Academy convened a group of academics and business leaders to explore the potential for and limits of an expanded role for corporations in addressing unmet social needs. The resulting study illuminated the complicated and controversial issues that arise from public-private collaboration.

Human diversity is an enormous cultural and biological resource and a source of social and political tension. The Academy convened a group of scholars to address the controversy over the relative roles of genetics and environment in determining human capacities and behavior.