I hope this spring issue of the Bulletin finds you well and enjoying this season of renewal. Spring is always a special time at the Academy, particularly because it is when we elect a new class of Academy members. In April, we were pleased to welcome more than 260 innovative thinkers across a wide range of fields and professions. We look forward to celebrating them during Induction Weekend on September 29–30, 2023, when they will join the Class of 2022 in signing the Academy’s Book of Members.
Our new members join the Academy at a particularly exciting moment. As you will see in the pages that follow, our two major commissions, the Commission on Accelerating Climate Action and the Commission on Reimagining Our Economy, have been at work for nearly two years and are now releasing their first work products.
In 2021, the Academy assembled the Commission on Accelerating Climate Action to identify the key barriers to meaningful action on climate change in the United States and to propose policy recommendations to address them. The Commission consists of a diverse group of members of native and indigenous communities, youth leaders and activists, faith community leaders, security experts, private sector employees, artists and humanists, and government leaders from both sides of the aisle. This issue of the Bulletin provides an overview of three of the Commission’s first work products: briefs focusing on effective climate change communication; climate change security risks and opportunities; and barriers to private sector action.
Also in 2021, the Academy launched the Commission on Reimagining Our Economy to rethink the principles, metrics, narratives, and policies that shape the nation’s political economy. Like the climate commission, the Commission on Reimagining Our Economy is an interdisciplinary and cross-partisan group comprising scholars, journalists, artists, and leaders from the faith, labor, business, and philanthropic communities. This issue of the Bulletin spotlights one of the Commission’s first major work products, Faces of America: Getting By in Our Economy, a photojournal that features quotes from listening sessions that the Commission conducted around the country.
There is exciting news to report related to the Academy’s leadership as well. I closed my message in the 2022 Annual Report with a tribute to the extraordinary service of Nancy Andrews, who will conclude her tenure as Chair of the Academy’s Board on June 30. I would like to close this message by recognizing her recently announced successor, Justice Goodwin Liu of the Supreme Court of California. Since his election to the Academy, Justice Liu has rendered exceptional service to our organization in a number of roles, including serving as a member of the Making Justice Accessible project, the aforementioned Commission on Reimagining Our Economy, the Committee on Anti-Racism, the membership section panel on Law, the Institutional Policy Committee, and the Board and Trust. I could not think of a better leader to help guide the Academy into its next era. I look forward to working with Justice Liu, our new members, and everyone in the Academy community to advance our work in service to the nation and the world.
David W. Oxtoby