The Mike & Sofia Segal Center for Academic Pluralism
The Mike & Sofia Segal Center for Academic Pluralism in NYC is home to academics who produce and disseminate scholarship to advance HxA's mission and improve discourse within higher education.
Heterodox Academy spearheads a movement to reform institutions of higher education. The goal is for institutions of higher education to better exemplify the ideals of open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement. But activist zeal isn’t enough. Effective change demands effective ideas—ideas about what the problems are, ideas about what the solutions are, and ideas about how to implement those solutions in the real, messy, complex world.
The Segal Center for Academic Pluralism is the ideas laboratory of Heterodox Academy. Its mission is to generate, test, criticize, and spread among university leaders, academics, cultural commentators, politicians, and the general public ideas about the ideals of open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement in higher education. Its researchers engage public discourse and policy debates about the purposes and workings of higher education.
The Segal Center hosts research fellows from various academic disciplines whose work aims to articulate and commend open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement; describe the prospects and challenges to their realization; uncover effective pathways to their promotion; and devise strategies for their advancement. Segal Center research fellows conduct original theoretical, normative, and data-driven research about higher education; they survey extant research; and they drive wider conversation about open inquiry in higher education.
If you are interested in supporting the Segal Center’s work, please reach out to Malik Peacock at peacock@heterodoxacademy.org.
Meet Dr. Colleen Eren, Faculty Fellow at the Segal Center (2024-25)
Colleen Eren, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice at William Paterson University. Colleen sat down with HxA to discuss the threats to open inquiry in the academy today that prevent scholars from following paths toward unorthodox conclusions. She was inspired to join the Segal Center because of its commitment to using scholarship to drive change in the academy. During her fellowship, Colleen will focus on improving the processes by which institutions of higher education take public positions on controversial social and political issues.
Meet Dr. Rebecca Roiphe, Faculty Fellow at the Segal Center (2024-25)
Rebecca Roiphe, Ph.D, is a Trustee Professor of Law at New York Law School, where she researches the history and ethics of the legal profession. She clerked for the First Circuit US Court of Appeals and was a prosecutor in Manhattan. Her research at the Segal Center as a Faculty Fellow will focus on the recent history of law school educational curricula and practice, with particular emphasis on how legal education has fostered viewpoint homogeneity in the legal profession.
Students are Reluctant to Discuss Israeli-Palestinian Conflict on Campus
In this research brief, we look at what the 2023 CES data say about students’ willingness to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on campus. Note that these data were collected in November and December 2023, and so do not reflect events on campus since data collection. The 2023 CES surveyed a nationally representative convenience sample of full-time college undergraduates at four-year colleges and universities within the US. Survey respondents were recruited online using stratified sampling via CloudResearch.
HxA Policy Model on Statement Neutrality
Today, the idea of institutional neutrality is experiencing a revival. While the Kalven Report remains enlightening and inspiring, it was written for one particular institution, at one moment in time. The HxA Model of Statement Neutrality, while springing from a shared premise–that the purpose of the university is to seek the truth–avoids certain unwieldy or unclear features of that report. The HxA Model also develops the positive speech aspects of neutrality in important ways
Free Expression on Campus: Data from the 2023 Campus Expression Survey
Just over 79% of our survey respondents reported being at least somewhat reluctant to discuss at least one of the 10 controversial topics asked about on the CES. The number of students who reported at least some reluctance to discuss a topic was up to 200% higher in the case of the most controversial topics, relative to a typical course topic.
Applications for 2025-26 Fellowships Now Open
We are accepting applications for faculty and postdoc fellows. Applications due by December 31, 2024.
Our visiting Fellows and HxA staff (bolded) publish a variety of articles while at the Segal Center.
- Clark, C.J., Isch, C., Everett, J., and Shariff, A. Politicization Undermines Trust in Institutions, Even Among the Ideologically Aligned Public, 20 September 2023, PREPRINT (Version 1) under review at Nature Portfolio. https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-3239561/v1
- Clark, C. J., Isch, C., & Shariff, A. (2024). Why do organizations take political stances? A review of reasons and risks. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 18 (7). https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12985
- Gjesdal, A. (2024). Diversity and business legitimacy. Journal of Business Ethics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-024-05695-y
- Gjesdal, A. (2024). Liberalism, polarization, and the aggregation problem. Synthese, 203 (5). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023-04441-7
- Robertson, C. E., Shariff, A., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2024). Morality in the anthropocene: The perversion of compassion and punishment in the online world. PNAS Nexus, 3 (6). https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae193
- Weiss, E. (2024). On the Warpath: My Battles With Indians, Pretendians, and Woke Warriors. Academica Press. https://www.academicapress.com/node/650
- Clark, C. J., Jussim, L., Frey, K., Stevens, S. T., al-Gharbi, M., Aquino, K., Bailey, J. M., Barbaro, N., Baumeister, R. F., Bleske-Rechek, A., Buss, D., Ceci, S., Del Giudice, M., Ditto, P. H., Forgas, J. P., Geary, D. C., Geher, G., Haider, S., Honeycutt, N., . . . Von Hippel, W. (2023). Prosocial motives underlie scientific censorship by scientists: A perspective and research agenda. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120 (48). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2301642120
- Gjesdal, A. (2023). Agnosticism and Pluralism about Justice. Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 26 (1). https://doi.org/10.26556/jesp....
The Segal Center is supported in part by generous funders. If you're interested in supporting the Segal Center, reach out to our Development Manager, Malik Peacock, peacock@heterodoxacademy.org
Our Work with the Mike & Sofia Segal Foundation
The Foundation’s support will enable HxA to expand its membership, research and policy projects, and deepen its impact on colleges and universities. The gift represents the Segal Foundation’s continuing commitment to intellectual freedom as a safeguard for individual rights, a driver of cultural and scientific progress, and an essential principle of democracy and human dignity.
Our Work With Templeton Religion Trust
Integral to this project is creating and sustaining an intellectual think tank in NYC with annual visiting fellows in residence. Key outputs will be an annotated bibliography of scholarly resources focused on intellectual pluralism; several surveys to better understand professors’ needs and identify opportunities for new research; and resources professors need to confidently articulate and practice intellectual pluralism.
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Your generosity supports our non-partisan efforts to advance the principles of open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement to improve higher education and academic research.