Editor’s Journal
Education, Social Invention, and a Society in “Spiritual Chaos”
America’s community colleges have pulled off something close to a moonshot in making education accessible.
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The Ongoing Transformation
Art at the Extremes of Exploration
What can exploration of the universe’s extremities teach us about home and ourselves? Richelle Ellis, a multidisciplinary artist and analog astronaut, shares how art can help us better understand humanity, technology, and our planet.
Making Sense of Biosecurity in the Age of AI
October 22, 20263:00pm–4:00pm
The Latest
Interview
“Community Colleges Have Become Central to How America Solves Its Problems at the Local Level.”
DeRionne Pollard, president and CEO of the American Association of Community Colleges, makes the case for community colleges as essential institutions that help individuals prosper, anchor civic life, and drive regional and national economic growth.
Social Media
Beware the Funhouse Mirror
Instead of opening debate and reflecting public opinion, social media platforms have amplified a small subset of extreme voices who dominate discussion, poison public discourse, and mislead the public.
Ethics, Norms, and Standards
On Being a Scientist in a Disrupted Research Landscape
A new publication aims to train young scientists to act responsibly and ethically, be good stewards of public funding and trust, and navigate the broader responsibilities that come with being a scientist in this rapidly shifting landscape.
Biosecurity
Biosecurity for the Age of AI
There is much discussion on how artificial intelligence poses threats to biosecurity; there should be at least as much focus on how AI can expand the solutions.
Archives
Henrietta Swan Leavitt: The Woman Who Measured the Universe
American astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt’s research laid the foundation for modern astronomy’s understanding of the structure and size of the universe.
Book Review
India’s Pursuit of Tech Self-Reliance
Nikhil Menon looks at how the forces of global politics and capitalism shaped India’s technological revolution, as described in Dwaipayan Banerjee’s recent book.
Digital Identity
Switzerland’s Trek Toward a National Digital Identity System
The nation’s experience with developing digital credentials may be instructive for other countries seeking to build an identity system that reflects civic and social preferences.
Reparative Science
Repairing Relations With Science
How can scientists and research institutions contribute to social justice?
University Innovation
Is It Time to Say Bye-Bye to Bayh-Dole?
Even though the 1980 Bayh–Dole Act is widely considered a success, the modern research enterprise operates under new tensions that the legislation was not built to address.
Grid Infrastructure
The Grid’s Invisible Constraint
A lack of standardized infrastructure data is holding back efforts to modernize the nation’s electrical grid.
Data Centers
How Communities Are Bargaining With Big Tech Over Data Centers
Data centers have become tests of whether and how local governments can negotiate the physical terms of the AI economy.
Real Numbers
Nurturing America’s Seed Fund
A core design feature allows the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs to serve a federal innovation system with missions as diverse as biomedical research, energy technology, and national defense.
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The Promise of Organized Knowledge
Vol. XLIII, No. 1, Fall 2026
The Fall 2026 issue explores how artificial intelligence might affect public policy in a variety of domains. Take biosecurity: Despite the fear that AI could be used to engineer dangerous pathogens, a former FBI special agent argues that the technology can also be used to uncover suspicious activity and possible bad actors before they become a threat. On economic policy: Spectacular wealth from AI will accrue to relatively few companies and individuals. What if a country were to create an AI sovereign wealth fund to distribute these profits more equitably? A group of Canadian scholars and legislators proposes to set up just such a fund. And when it comes to trust, a cultural anthropologist argues that CERN, the world’s most successful large-scale science collaboration, has many lessons to offer European regulators about how to build trust and transparency when using AI for science.
Browse the Issue
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Forum
In response to essays published in Issues, our readers weigh in on critical topics in policy related to science, technology, and society.
Fall 2026
A Tradition of Federal Innovation
A Discussion of
Nurturing America’s Seed Fund
Responses By
Fall 2026
What Are the Goals for AI?
A Discussion of
Escaping AI’s Measurement Trap
Responses By
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What Happens When Information Is Severed From Its Source?
Information is social: It is produced, shared, and solidified into “fact” through human relationships. Artificial intelligence is disrupting those relationships and transforming knowledge into “content.”
Response
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Sunshine Hills Reality Edit
What does it look like to search for truth across ideological bubbles? In a remote cabin, an online encyclopedia editor has collected a vast library of books that she hopes can counteract a polarized online information environment. When she gets a surprise visit from some young idealists, the editor is forced to confront what it means to curate information some find dangerous.
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How Can We Sustain Sustainable Housing?
How can rapidly expanding cities provide affordable, green housing? To understand the challenges in doing so, look to the capital of Nigeria.
Response
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Where the Wild Things Grow
Imagine a housing development that takes green architecture to another level, braiding plants into the very scaffolding of a home. Osahon Ize-Iyamu’s story brings us to such a development, where a grief-stricken daughter struggles to defend her late mother’s vision of sustainable housing against financial, regulatory, and personal hurdles.
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From Gospel to Guide
Familial and cultural prompts shape children’s experiences of relationships and themselves—especially among children in diaspora. How do those prompts change over time?
Response
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Prompts for a Perfect Daughter
A young protagonist is forced to follow strict prompts embedded deep in her brain via an implant. The protagonist’s parents installed the brain implant in the hopes of guiding their child to live a “good” life. But when the family immigrates to a place whose customs and language diverge from their own, the protagonist is torn between internal and external prompts—and discovers how quickly they can both become a trap.
Over four decades, Issues has hosted many articles discussing science’s “social contract”—the idea, as physicist Harvey Brooks articulated it in 1988, that the scientific enterprise would provide “social benefits in exchange for an unusual degree of self-governance and financial support free of strings.” Today, this contract is clearly defunct: The federal government has cut funding for science, cast doubt on scientific findings, and prioritized investment in research outside the university system. Whatever the future of federally funded science is, it’s no longer “free of strings.” As the scientific enterprise tries to decide how to respond, it first needs to figure out what happened.
This collection is part of an exploration of science’s social contract that is generously supported by The Kavli Foundation, Rita Allen Foundation, and Dana Foundation.
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Who Should Decide How to Use Taxpayer Dollars to Fund Scientific Research?
After the firing of the National Science Board, legislators have an opportunity to establish a new balance between democratic accountability and protection from partisan meddling.
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Merton Redux: Re-Confronting the Norms of Science in Democracy
Although public attention is focused on the federal government’s efforts to slash funding for scientific research, the decimation of the democratic institutional processes that undergird state-sponsored scientific research is far more consequential.
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A Science Funding System Beyond the Linear Model
To improve the relationship between science and the public, funders should embrace a new ontology of scientific work that aligns incentives with society’s goals.
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How the American Research University Survives
University leadership needs to shift attention from chasing prestige to crafting strategies for long-term success.
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