This project assembled recognized leaders from all sectors of science, engineering, and technology to recommend policy actions to help ensure the long-term sustainability of the U.S. science and engineering research enterprise.

This project focused on the meaning of “public interest” communication in a 500-channel marketplace, with particular emphasis on television’s failure to fulfill its potential as an educational medium.

This project examined higher education and research in Germany and the United States.

This study examined the scope of mass incarceration, its political significance, and its social impacts, weighing the concerns about crime control, rehabilitation, and more fundamental issues of social justice.

The constantly evolving nature of the Internet raises questions about its use and security. This project investigated how the complex social issues of identity, access, and trust will affect the future of the Internet.

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.

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 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 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.

While the digital revolution has changed the nature of news distribution, it has not diminished the need for ambitious, accurate, and reliable journalism in American society. This project looked at the evolving role of the media in today’s world, in general, and analyzed how reporters cover science and economic issues, in particular.

Most Americans seek a more coherent, collaborative, national conversation in which individual interests can be aligned with the greater good. This project analyzed American institutions to develop a better understanding of their role in the American democratic system and to develop proposals to increase civic participation and public confidence in American leaders and institutions.

The Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences claimed a space in the national dialogue for the humanities and the social sciences and recommended specific steps that government, schools and universities, cultural institutions, businesses, and philanthropies could take to support and strengthen these areas of knowledge.

This project attempted to deal constructively with the principal issues raised by the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). The resulting report, initially published as a double-issue of Dædalus, does not reach conclusions about the desirability or feasibility of the SDI; rather, it presents favorable, opposing, and skeptical views about the relevant scientific, technological, strategic, and political issues involved.

After an examination of research literature showed that evaluations of many educational interventions were nearly useless because they provided little reliable information about whether programs worked, the Academy created The Center for Evaluation to apply meta-analysis to the problem. Researchers extracted information from experimental data from multiple sources to analyze studies on topics such as optimum class size and grouping students according to skill levels.

The Commission on Language Learning examined the current state of language education, projected what the nation’s education needs would be in the future, and offered recommendations for ways to meet those needs.

To address a deepening crisis in the lives of America’s children, the Academy organized a steering committee to explore how the Academy could increase the nation’s commitment to and investment in children.

This commission is dedicated to ensuring all students, especially historically underserved students, can thrive and find rewarding jobs in an ever-changing global economy, empowering them to actively engage in society. 

This project was designed to advance a set of clear, national recommendations for closing the justice gap that currently exists between the demand for civil legal services and the supply.