This major comparative study of anti-modernist, anti-secular militant religious movements on five continents and within seven world religious traditions resulted in multiple influential publications.

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.

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.

This project examined the evolving relationship between Congress and the Supreme Court. Among other issues, it addressed the Supreme Court's increasing willingness to place constitutional limits on Congress' power to enact statutes; the judicial nomination and confirmation process; and questions of statutory interpretation.

In 1994, nearly one hundred university leaders, scholars of scientific research, and executives from industry convened at Stanford University to examine the nature and significance of developments in university-industry research relationships over the previous fifteen years.

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.

The Academy conducted a major reexamination of U.S. foreign policy toward Russia. The goal was to develop a comprehensive, coherent, and effective policy on U.S.-Russian relations for consideration by the then new U.S. administration, Congress, and the media.

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.

As the second phase of Meeting the Challenges of the New Nuclear Age, this initiative explored challenges created by “new” nuclear weapons states, potential proliferators, and de facto nuclear weapons states.

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.

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.

One-third of the earth’s land surface is arid or semi-arid. In 1975, in celebration of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s 50th anniversary, leading scientists from Israel and the U.S. convened at the Academy to participate in a two-day program devoted to the problems and potentialities relating to the development of the world’s arid regions.

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

This study compared France and the United States’ immigration policies, race relations, and political institutions. It looked at how both countries educate and house immigrants and analyzed the political and legal implications of integration, marginalization, and discrimination in each country.

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.

In the 1970s, the use of plutonium as an energy source was highly controversial. The Academy, in cooperation with Argonne National Laboratory, held a joint symposium that included a wide range of scholars from the sciences, social sciences and humanities; special interest groups; representatives of energy-related industries; the media; and politicians.

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.”

An Academy study group evaluated the potential of a proposed joint U.S.-Russian center for the exchange of data on missile launches.

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.

The Humanities Indicators is a nationally recognized source of nonpartisan information on the state of the humanities, providing researchers, policy-makers, journalists, humanities practitioners, and engaged citizens with better tools to answer basic questions about the past, present, and future of the field.