An Academy study group looked at the intellectual and ethical dilemmas faced by U.S. professors as they balance responsibilities to their students, their disciplines, the university, and the broader community.
Through Track-2 meetings between U.S., Russian, and Chinese experts, Promoting Dialogue on Arms Control and Disarmament seeks to identify a range of measures to enhance strategic stability among the major nuclear powers and avoid costly arms races.
This project focused on the critical importance of civic engagement to issues of democratization and economic development, in the U. S. and in developing countries with the aim of sharpening the concept of “social capital” — that is, social networks, norms, institutions and trust — through sustained dialogue among social theorists and empirical researchers.
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.
A study group composed of policy figures, military experts, and policy analysts studied such issues as the technical and political aspects of the U.S. and Soviet command and control systems over nuclear forces; the devolution and delegation of authority to use nuclear weapons; and the synergistic effects of U.S. and Soviet actions during a crisis.
The Commission on the Arts is a multi-year project with distinguished cochairs, more than $1 million of support from foundations and individuals, and a commitment to exploring the role of the arts in American life, with an emphasis on arts education and infrastructure.
This project was initiated in response to the widespread recognition, in the late 1970s, that the institution of marriage was experiencing profound but poorly understood changes.
The Alternative Energy Future project examines how to facilitate the adoption of cleaner and more efficient energy technologies using knowledge from the social and behavioral sciences.
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.
By convening scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers with representatives of the courts, legal aid providers, and foundations, the project seeks to understand and assess the challenge of providing legal services for low-income Americans.
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.
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.
This project analyzed public trust in vaccines from multiple disciplines to identify barriers to vaccine coverage, evaluate the role of the media in the public’s attitudes towards vaccines, and provide recommendations to improve the public’s trust in vaccines.
In the 1960s, the United States developed a national system of social programs based on President Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1964 declaration of “unconditional war on poverty.” In 1966, the Academy convened a series of seminars on the many components of poverty.
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.
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 co-sponsored a workshop to explore the feasibility of the United States and the Soviet Union agreeing to halt production of the radioactive, warhead-boosting agent tritium and to pace steady, significant reductions in their arsenals at the relatively rapid rate of tritium’s decay – the so-called “tritium factor.”
The Academy was instrumental in the establishment in 1970 of the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) in Nairobi, Kenya. The goal of the ICIPE is to develop more effective and less dangerous pesticides through a greater understanding of insect biology.
The Academy convened a program of conferences and studies that led to the seminal 1960 special issue of Dædalus on arms control, which President John F. Kennedy subsequently called the “Bible” on the subject.
