The Academy is bringing together political scientists, legal and security experts, health professionals, and humanitarians to rethink the provision of essential health services in areas of violent conflict.

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.

This multi-disciplinary Academy initiative is focused on the urgent global challenge of climate change and recommending meaningful actions to accelerate climate mitigation and adaptation strategies for all Americans.

Human migration is a worldwide phenomenon, spanning every epoch and encompassing many peoples, but one that had not been much studied by scholars. Motivated by this gap in knowledge, the Academy organized a symposium to encourage cross-disciplinary exchange on the policies, patterns, and implications of migration over time, and across and within national borders.

This project examined superpower relations during the Cold War as a cooperative effort in order to illuminate the constraints and opportunities that will influence possible superpower cooperation in the future.

This project investigated how environmental degradation and depletion of natural resources might contribute to social strife and conflict in many parts of the world.

Twenty two biological and social scientists from academic, research, governmental, and international institutions gathered for a symposium to discuss how the academic community might help mitigate the ravages of hunger and malnutrition worldwide.

As the economic and technological gap widened between the developed nations and the developing world, the Academy, the National Academy of Sciences, and other scientific organizations considered the feasibility of establishing an International Foundation for Science to support the research of young scientists and technical investigators in developing countries. In 1972, the IFS was established as a nongovernmental organization in Stockholm.

This project investigated the function and historical role of learned societies in advancing research and stimulating communication about scientific and scholarly ideas, not only within the intellectual community but among segments of the larger society.

In 1962, the Academy received a grant from NASA to study the long-range effects of space exploration on American life. At a time when the nation was committing enormous and unprecedented financial, scientific and manpower resources to the NASA program, the Academy study was charged with investigating the potential consequences, intended and unintended, of this mobilization on various sectors of society.

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.

The ARISE project and its resulting report sought to foster a new generation of scientists and stimulate innovation to generate competitive advantage in a global economy.

This project brought together physical scientists, legal experts, space program directors, economists, political scientists, and policymakers from all space-faring nations to discuss how to mitigate the problem of ever-increasing quantities of man-made orbital debris in space.

Against a background of changing international politics, the Academy convened a multidisciplinary conference to analyze the direction of international security, to explore current and foreseeable sources of conflict, to examine the instruments that might be used in these conflicts, and to discuss ways that future conflicts might be mitigated.

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.

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

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.

In 1990, the Academy co-sponsored an interdisciplinary symposium focused on trends in current scholarship on homelessness. The resulting publication critically examined the shortcomings of the research into the causes of homelessness and addressed barriers to remedying this social problem.

The Academy hosted an international planning meeting to develop a proposal for a new world-class research center in Brazil that would help develop the country’s research capabilities in the life sciences.

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.