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 1985, the Academy hosted a major international symposium commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Niels Bohr, the great Danish physicist and the “father of quantum mechanics.” The symposium’s papers were published in collective volume in 1988.

In October 1999, a distinguished group of scholars from different disciplines was convened to assess the evolution of law over the previous hundred years. Each contributor was asked to write about a particular area of law, or a theme in law and legal scholarship, tracing developments and interrelated changes in the legal and the social order.

This project examined the evolving relationship between Congress and the Supreme Court. Among other issues, it addressed the Supreme Court's increasing willingness to place constitutional limits on Congress' power to enact statutes; the judicial nomination and confirmation process; and questions of statutory interpretation.

This project brought together educators and practitioners to explore ways to foster strong, ethical leadership skills in three arenas critical to American society: business, law, and the university.

Published as a double issue of the Academy’s journal, Dædalus, this study is a comprehensive survey of the problems and the status of Blacks in American society, a topic of great urgency at the time. The resulting volume has been considered seminal in explaining the complexities and implications of racial problems in the United States in the 1960s.

Using the field of chemistry as a case study, this project probed how the expansion of electronic communications is altering the collection, dissemination, and storage of scholarly information.

Representatives of two of the world’s major industrial nations, and thus major polluters, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., met in August 1991 at the Rockefeller Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy, to discuss ways to improve environmental protection practices in the two nations.

As the second phase of Meeting the Challenges of the New Nuclear Age, this initiative explored challenges created by “new” nuclear weapons states, potential proliferators, and de facto nuclear weapons states.

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. 

The ARISE II project developed actionable recommendations to sustain a competitive U.S. research enterprise. This work was designed to foster new relationships across the disciplines and between the private and public sectors.

The Academy study on Civil Wars, Violence, and International Responses is driven by the desire to provide new tools for analyzing, responding to, and, where possible, preventing the threats posed by the collapse of state authority associated with civil wars.

This project examined how to improve the scientific community’s appreciation of public concerns about science and technology. The project reversed the more common question of public understanding of science by asking what scientists know or should know about the public and its concerns.