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"What does it say about the United States today that this fellowship of the arts and sciences and philosophy is called to affirm knowledge as a public good? What have we come to when the self-evident has to be argued as if—500 years into the Enlightenment and 230-some years into the life of this Republic—it is a proposition still to be proven?"

—E.L. Doctorow’s keynote address at the April 2007 joint meeting of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.