The Academy’s strategic priorities include improving the impact of the Academy’s work and raising the visibility of the institution with external audiences. These audiences vary and have included policymakers at the federal, state, and local level; leaders in philanthropy, higher education, nonprofit organizations, and business; scholars and students; advocacy groups; professional groups and practitioners; and the public.
There are three ways in which Academy projects seek to have impact. One is by informing the debate or discussion. Measures of success in this area include reach (for example, website visits, publication downloads, and hard copies of publications distributed); earned media (such as citations, interviews, and op-eds); use of the project’s work in education or training; citations in legislative activity; references in scholarly publications and in meeting materials; briefings and events with key audiences; and testimonials.
A second way in which projects can be impactful is by supporting advocacy organizations and influential individuals who can advance the recommendations and solutions offered by Academy projects. Indicators of success include convenings that advance a project’s recommendations; advocacy organizations using or citing Academy work in their outreach to policymakers or other decision-makers; and endorsements of Academy recommendations with letters or calls to action.
A third way the Academy seeks to have impact is by helping catalyze the implementation of new policies, practices, programs, or investment. Impact in this area may be difficult to connect to the Academy’s work because it could take years to realize and may be the result of joint efforts by many contributors. Where appropriate, the Academy may be positioned to take a more direct role in incubating or piloting new initiatives or lining up a partner institution to do so.
What follows is an overview of how each program area is approaching impact and some highlights of project impact in 2024.
American Institutions, Society & the Public Good
In the fall of 2023, the Commission on Reimagining Our Economy (CORE) released its final report, Advancing a People-First Economy, a county-level data dashboard, the CORE Score, and a photojournal, Faces of America: Getting By in Our Economy. In 2024, Commission members, Academy leadership, and staff conducted extensive outreach to connect with key audiences. This included briefings with researchers and policymakers at eight of the twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks and the Division of Consumer & Community Affairs at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; the White House Council of Economic Advisors; Democratic and Republic lawmakers and staff from over forty House and Senate offices; and state officials, including the Lieutenant Governor of Indiana and Wisconsin lawmakers. The Commission’s work has been featured in several media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Hill, Bloomberg, and The New Republic. The Commission convened two working groups to follow up on its recommendations: one on economic connectedness, which released a website that offers guiding questions for community leaders and citizens and also features case studies that are fostering cross-class relationships, and another on community partnership visas, which will publish its report in early 2025. The Commission engaged with Academy members at events in Palo Alto, Los Angeles, Ann Arbor, and Madison, and featured the photos from Faces of America at several events around the country.
The Our Common Purpose (OCP) project’s follow-up report, The Case for Supreme Court Term Limits, received media coverage in The Washington Post, Reuters, and Forbes, and was featured in numerous briefings with members of Congress and staff from both parties, including Senate Judiciary Committee staff and the office of the Senate Minority Leader. In June, the Academy hosted a panel discussion in Washington, D.C., with Diane Wood (American Law Institute), Stephen McAllister (University of Kansas School of Law), and Sarah Binder (George Washington University; Brookings Institution), moderated by Kimberly Atkins Stohr (The Boston Globe), that addressed the constitutionality and practicality of Supreme Court term limits. The attendees included Academy members and congressional staff.
One of the recommendations in the OCP report is to create a universal expectation of service. In partnership with America’s Service Commissions and California Volunteers, the Academy conducted a national service public opinion poll to understand the motivations and barriers for young Americans to participate in a year of service. Results from this research informed data-driven recommendations to help state service commissions improve recruitment for national service programs. The results were shared in briefings with state service commission leaders and AmeriCorps and cross-agency federal leadership, and at a public event in July organized with CalVolunteers and America’s Service Commissions. The event featured OCP Commission members Lisa García Bedolla (University of California, Berkeley) and Pete Peterson (Pepperdine University); service leaders Kristen Bennett (Service Year Alliance) and Kaira Esgate (America’s Service Commissions); and public sector leaders from California Goodwin Liu (Supreme Court of California), Josh Fryday (Office of the Governor of California), and Doris Matsui (U.S. House of Representatives, California’s 7th District).
In 2024, the Our Common Purpose project helped pave the way for the launch of the Trust for Civic Life, a new philanthropic initiative inspired by one of the project’s recommendations. The Trust supports rural programs that strengthen community bonds, civic engagement, and everyday democracy. Launched with over $25 million in funding from six funding partners and five learning partners, the Trust is bringing together a diverse set of national philanthropies.
The Academy’s Making Justice Accessible project hosted a summit in March that convened sixty-two participants from across the country, representing civil justice, philanthropy, government, corporate social purpose, advocacy and reform, scholarship, and nonprofit public interest. Advisory Committee Cochairs Martha Minow (Harvard Law School) and John Levi (Legal Services Corporation; Sidley Austin LLP) led the Summit, which highlighted various initiatives and strategies for addressing access to justice issues in and beyond the courthouse, and demonstrated the numerous ways to integrate civil justice efforts within communities to strengthen people-centered outcomes. In December, the Academy released a new report, Achieving Civil Justice: A Framework for Collaboration, that describes promising developments underway to increase access to civil justice through a broader civil justice workforce and the adoption of new technologies. The report also emphasizes the importance of new investments to expand and complement legal aid and new networks of organizations delivering civil justice support to Americans. The project and report were featured at the National Legal Aid & Defenders Association Equal Justice Conference in May and the Self-Represented Litigation Network’s meeting in September.
Education
A new Commission on Opportunities After High School launched this year. The Commission discussed questions about audience and impact at its meetings in May and November and in the discussions of working groups focused on reimagining post-secondary education, reimagining K-12 education, and the future of work and society. The Commission is conducting listening sessions with key stakeholders, including high school students; high school administrators, counselors, and teachers; college students; college administrators and faculty; high school graduates not enrolled in college; employers; parents; and other community-based, youth-serving organizations. In 2024, the sessions were held in Dallas, TX, Aurora, CO, Philadelphia, PA, Bismarck, ND, Indianapolis, IN, and Los Angeles, CA.
In March, the Academy released a white paper, Leading for a Future of Higher Education Equity: Transforming Supreme Court Challenges into Opportunities for Positive Change, that summarizes findings from a 2023 exploratory meeting. The white paper was distributed to leaders of the Academy’s Affiliate institutions. In April, the Academy reconvened the exploratory meeting participants and other leaders in higher education to discuss progress on their campuses in supporting equity in a changed legal context.
In June, the Academy held its annual Forum on Higher Education in Aspen, CO. More than one hundred higher education experts and leaders attended, including university presidents, provosts, and academic deans from many of the Academy’s Affiliate institutions. Panel topics included the future of work, speech on campus and beyond, the changing political landscape, the health of our communities, artificial intelligence in our world, and science innovation on campuses.
Global Security & International Affairs
The Promoting Dialogue on Arms Control and Disarmament project, chaired by Steven Miller (Harvard University), continued its work to foster strategic and Track II dialogues between U.S. and Chinese experts and between U.S. and Russian experts and to produce publications on critical debates within nuclear arms control.
In January, the Academy and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace cohosted a roundtable discussion that focused on the Academy publication, Missile Defense and the Strategic Relationship among the United States, Russia, and China. Tong Zhao (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), one of the authors in the publication, shared key points from his essay on “Managing the Impact of Missile Defense on U.S.-China Strategic Stability.” Participants included policymakers, practitioners, and academics, and the discussion focused on China’s concerns over U.S. missile defense, as well as measures that both the United States and China can take to improve bilateral strategic relations.
In May, the Academy partnered with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and Managing the Atom at Harvard Kennedy School to convene a U.S.-China Track II dialogue in Shanghai. The dialogue brought together thirty U.S. and Chinese experts, leading scholars on arms control, and former senior officials. American experts briefed Nicholas Burns, Academy member and U.S. Ambassador to China, and officials at the U.S. State Department.
In December, the Academy and Managing the Atom convened experts from the United States, Russia, Ukraine, other countries in Europe, China, and India for a Track II dialogue focused on the European security order during and beyond the war in Ukraine. Sessions focused on the challenges of envisioning a postwar order, potential diplomatic paths to ending the war, the role of third-party states, domestic factors shaping war policy in each country (or region), the impact of the war on managing a multipolar nuclear world, how the war is affecting national security agendas, and coping with multiple wars, including the expanding Middle East conflict.
The Humanities, Arts & Culture
The Humanities Indicators continue to be an important resource for media and scholarly discussions on the state of the humanities. The Indicators were cited this year over fifty times in a wide range of media, including USA Today, The New York Times, CNN, The Boston Globe, Bloomberg, The Globe and Mail, Chicago Tribune, Inside Philanthropy, Axios, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, Ann Arbor Observer, Fordham News, The Daily Princetonian, and Cincinnati Public Radio WVXU. The Indicators were also cited in ten books published in 2024 and were discussed at national conferences, such as the National Humanities Conference, the American Historical Association Conference, a Next Generation Humanities Conference in Little Rock, and the annual meeting of the National Humanities Alliance. They were also presented at meetings at Princeton University, the Catholic University of America, George Mason University, University of California, Riverside, the Society for Scholarly Publishing, and the Society for History on the Early American Republic.
In partnership with the American Association of Colleges & Universities, the Academy hosted an exploratory meeting in September to develop further the idea for a “Center for Humanities Communication” that would draw on best practices from other fields to better articulate the value of the humanities and serve as a clearinghouse for information, training, and resources. The idea for the Center emerged during an Academy event in March 2023 marking the tenth anniversary of the publication of The Heart of the Matter report.
Science, Engineering & Technology
Since the launch of the Commission on Accelerating Climate Action’s final report, Forging Climate Solutions, members of the Commission and Academy staff have held briefings with representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Science and Technology Policy, and thirty-five congressional offices (split evenly between Democrats and Republicans). The Commission also engaged with the National Governors Association. By the conclusion of the project in June, Commission members had participated in twelve outreach events, including COP28, the American Geophysical Union conference, the CERAWeek conference, the annual meeting of the Medical Society Consortium, a meeting of the Alaska Forum on the Environment, the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a conference of the Edison Electric Institute, a philanthropy workshop with the CLEO Institute, and a joint webinar with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on environmental justice. The Commission was also featured at Academy member events in Houston, San Diego, and Ann Arbor.