Thanks to generous support from the Mike and Sofia Segal Foundation, the Templeton Religion Trust, and other donors, Heterodox Academy’s Segal Center for Academic Pluralism is pleased to invite applications for its Research Fellowship program for the 2025-2026 academic year.

The Center, which is located in the heart of New York City, seeks to explore the theoretical and empirical foundations for pluralism in higher institutions of research and education, and share our findings with scholars, opinion leaders, and lay public around the world. Heterodox Academy believes that its core values of open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement are essential for universities and colleges to fulfill their distinctive purposes.

Segal Center Research Fellows will investigate central questions in the philosophy, law, history, and science of open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement in higher education, in order to discover how to better promote these values in higher institutions of research and education. Research Fellows will also work to disseminate their insights to academic and non-academic audiences. In pursuing these aims, Research Fellows at the Segal Center will advance Heterodox Academy’s overall mission by equipping its members with fresh approaches, deeper understanding, and empirical data that show why and how academia might fruitfully exemplify the values of open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement.

Current Research Fellows at the Segal Center include Professor James Shanahan of Indiana University, Bloomington, Professor Rebecca Roiphe of New York Law School, and Professor Colleen Eren of William Paterson University. Current Fellows are currently investigating topics such as the extent to which journalism and media schools value viewpoint diversity, how legal education in the US has become resulted in an ideologically homogeneous legal profession, the institutional processes underlying when and why universities and college make pronouncements on controversial issues, and the how activist tendencies of students and faculty can be reconciled with the university’s core purposes.

For more details on the available fellowships and to apply, please see the job postings for our Faculty Research and Postdoctoral Research Fellowships.