After World War II, the social sciences operated in a changed field, particularly in terms of their relations to the polity and the economy. This study examined whether the social sciences can credibly claim to perform an impartial role and how to maintain ethical integrity in social science scholarship.

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.

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.

At a time when national and international leaders were involved in a debate over restraints on chemical and biological weapons, the Academy, with the Salk Institute, organized a conference to illuminate the most important public policy issues raised by the existence of chemical and biological weapons.

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.

This project examines the relationship between legal systems and the cultures in which they are embedded, with particular emphasis on the legal profession.

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.

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.

By the early 1970s, much of the conceptual base for arms control efforts remained grounded in the Academy’s 1960 project and special issue of Dædalus on arms control.

The Academy co-funded a conference at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University to explore emerging scholarly work on the social and psychological characteristics of adulthood as a distinct stage in the human life cycle.

This conference had its origins in the divergence that was clearly taking place in 1982 between the traditional arms control community and the freeze movement. The conference brought together freeze proponents, arms control specialists, government officials, and public interest group leaders in the hope that some differences could be resolved, the essential issues identified, and an agenda of work formulated. The proceedings were subsequently published.

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.

In 1984, as China was reviving its long-neglected education system, a small delegation from the American Academy visited the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to help develop programs that will allow Chinese scholars to learn about developments in Western social science and humanistic disciplines and allow U.S. scholars to learn about scholarly and societal developments in China.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Academy organized several conferences and studies devoted to the history, origin, and development of fields of research, such as physics, molecular biology, and bioenergetics.

In 1973, the Academy formed a planning committee to explore the development and creation in the United States of an institute for advanced humanistic studies, somewhat analogous to the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

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.

The Academy hosted a conference to allow scholars an opportunity to systematically analyze the critical issues involved with chemical weapons policy and to develop a framework for official deliberations among nations.

The Academy gathered together a multidisciplinary group of scholars to design a study of environmental decision-making that focused on the theoretical aspects of the process and examined policy analysis and decision-making.

The International Criminal Court is designed to bring to justice individuals who commit genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The Academy brought together legal, political, and military experts to examine the proposed International Criminal Court and its meaning for US security.

Located around the globe but operated by American parent institutions, interdisciplinary American Overseas Advanced Research Centers provide essential support to American humanistic and social science scholars working in foreign countries.