Projects

In 1977, nearly twenty-five years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision found that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” the aftershocks were still affecting American society. The Academy convened an interdisciplinary study group to examine the post-Brown urban school integration experience and to consider solutions to ongoing education inequality in American classrooms.

The Academy co-funded a conference at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University to explore emerging scholarly work on the social and psychological characteristics of adulthood as a distinct stage in the human life cycle.

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.

The Academy hosted a conference to allow scholars an opportunity to systematically analyze the critical issues involved with chemical weapons policy and to develop a framework for official deliberations among nations.

Twenty two biological and social scientists from academic, research, governmental, and international institutions gathered for a symposium to discuss how the academic community might help mitigate the ravages of hunger and malnutrition worldwide.

Human migration is a worldwide phenomenon, spanning every epoch and encompassing many peoples, but one that had not been much studied by scholars. Motivated by this gap in knowledge, the Academy organized a symposium to encourage cross-disciplinary exchange on the policies, patterns, and implications of migration over time, and across and within national borders.

As a member of the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO, the Academy formed a special committee to examine, and consider Academy action in response to, the “politicization” of UNESCO.

In collaboration with the Royal Society of Canada, the Academy sponsored a symposium in 1976 in Quebec to discuss the revolutionary tradition in Canada and America, and how each nation has dealt with revolutionary goals in the context of contemporary issues.

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.

The Academy co-sponsored a multidisciplinary symposium focused on the technical, political, and economic issues surrounding multinational control of the nuclear reactor fuel cycle. The resulting volume evaluates the advantages and disadvantages of placing reprocessing facilities under international or multinational control.

In 1973, the Academy formed a planning committee to explore the development and creation in the United States of an institute for advanced humanistic studies, somewhat analogous to the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

In 1972, when the word “ethnicity” was first introduced to the Oxford English Dictionary, the Academy convened a conference with the goal of assessing this widespread phenomenon, which was becoming an important and explanatory factor in the political arena throughout the world.

This project provides an institutional history of higher education in California.

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.

By the early 1970s, much of the conceptual base for arms control efforts remained grounded in the Academy’s 1960 project and special issue of Dædalus on arms control.

This project responded to growing concern over new developments in the Soviet-American nuclear competition. The Academy convened a conference to examine the emerging belief that the present second-strike, and thus deterrent, capabilities of missile-carrying nuclear submarines could be eroded by technological advances in strategic antisubmarine warfare.

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.

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.