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 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.

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.

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 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 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.

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 provides an institutional history of higher education in California.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

This London symposium examined the nature and implications of participation by Western European countries in the Strategic Defense Initiative being undertaken by the United States.

With new surgical techniques, like heart transplants, becoming indispensable tools in prolonging human life, the issue of human experimentation became a matter of increasing public interest. The Academy created an interdisciplinary working group to study the ethics of human experimentation, and the working group’s papers were initially published in Dædalus in 1969.

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.

Managing the ABM Treaty Regime into the 21st Century: This study analyzed ways in which the underlying objectives of the 1972 Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. could continue to be realized in the future.