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.

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.

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

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.

The Academy joined with the British Commission for Racial Equality and the Policy Studies Institute in London to compare and evaluate America’s and Britain’s policies toward eliminating discrimination and increasing opportunity for racial and cultural minorities.

This series of studies analyzes the evolution of humanities disciplines and institutions, examines the conditions and intellectual climate in which they operate, and assesses the role and value of the humanities in society.

This project investigated how environmental degradation and depletion of natural resources might contribute to social strife and conflict in many parts of the world.

This project investigated the function and historical role of learned societies in advancing research and stimulating communication about scientific and scholarly ideas, not only within the intellectual community but among segments of the larger society.

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.

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 traced the development of the modern general-purpose philanthropic foundation and assessed its role in philanthropy as a whole, as compared with the roles played by government, business corporations, company-affiliated foundations, individual donors, community-service organizations, and other participants in philanthropic activity.

The Academy organized two workshops to explore the role of women in developing and implementing national security policy.

The Forum, a collaboration of higher education leaders and scholars, launched in 1984 and moved to the Academy in 2022. The Higher Education Forum is an opportunity for the Academy to provide leadership and learning on pressing issues in higher education with a cross-disciplinary and cross-sector approach that draws on the strengths of its members and Affiliates.

This project examined the factors underlying recent scandals at a number of American corporations. The project’s publication, Restoring Trust in American Business, includes a set of recommendations for rebuilding the trust upon which the American system of capitalism depends.

In 1985, the Academy hosted a major international symposium commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Niels Bohr, the great Danish physicist and the “father of quantum mechanics.” The symposium’s papers were published in collective volume in 1988.

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.

Challenges for International Scientific Partnerships aimed to articulate the benefits of international collaboration and recommend solutions to the most pressing challenges associated with the design and operation of partnerships. This initiative sought to identify policy recommendations and best practices to mitigate challenges for international science collaborations, including physical facilities, distributed networks, and peer-to-peer partnerships.

The Commission seeks to reimagine the nation’s political economy, rethink the values that drive economic policy making, and advance recommendations that help individuals, communities, and the nation flourish.

This study investigated the rationale, the means, and the consequences of providing high-quality primary and secondary education to all the world's children.

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.