About the Bernard L. Schwartz Fellows Program

The purpose of New America's Bernard L. Schwartz Fellows Program is to train and support a new generation of aspiring public intellectuals. Toward this end, the New America Foundation provides economic, professional, and intellectual support to exceptionally promising young writers, thinkers, and analysts who wish to establish themselves as leading voices in the national policy debate. By investing in the career development of many of the best and brightest civic-minded writers of the day, the Foundation seeks to enrich the quality of America's public debate for years to come.

The Lack of New Voices

One of the primary causes of our nation's impoverished public debate is the scarcity of promising young thinkers making their mark as credible public intellectuals. Although there are organizations and publications on both sides of the political spectrum that help emerging writers espouse predictable, partisan positions, no comparable support structures exist for independent-minded thinkers who want to engage in an open-ended search for pragmatic public policy solutions. Aspiring intellectuals whose views do not put them squarely on one ideological side or another therefore lack the financial support, career guidance, institutional credibility, and intellectual community needed for them to emerge as potent new voices on the national scene.

Recruitment and Selection

Every year, the New America Foundation awards up to 35 fellowships on a highly competitive basis. At one end of the spectrum are Senior Fellows who have already distinguished themselves as leading policy thinkers. At the other end are a larger group of Fellows who have exceptional potential but are not yet well established. All Fellows come to the Foundation to pursue solutions-oriented research and writing programs of their own design. A comprehensive application and multiple interview process is used to determine which candidates combine powerful ideas for moving public thinking into new terrain with a proven ability to communicate in ways that can gain broad national attention. For profiles of current Fellows or for fellowship application guidelines, please visit our web site.

Career Development

New America Fellows receive far more than financial support. They are provided office space, health insurance, research and editorial assistance, help in placing articles, and perhaps most important, the opportunity to interact in a close-knit intellectual community. The organization's senior staff regularly provides intellectual guidance, high quality editing, training in public speaking, and a host of other professional development services to the Fellows. At the same time, New America strives to build a diverse, vibrant, and interdisciplinary intellectual community-which is essential if cross-pollination of ideas and genuine policy breakthroughs are to occur. In this spirit, the organization holds regular Fellows meetings and weekend-long retreats to allow all Fellows to discuss their latest research and writing projects with one another, and to gain helpful perspectives and advice in the process. The Foundation also hosts regular events and seminars featuring well known outside speakers.

Publications And Impact

New America's Fellows have been remarkably successful in publishing articles in all of the nation's leading opinion magazines, op-ed pages, and policy journals. In the Foundation's first six years, our Fellows and staff published more than two dozen books and over 2,000 high-profile articles, of which 142 appeared in The New York Times, 183 in the Los Angeles Times, 92 in The Washington Post, and 59 as magazine cover stories. As a result of these publications, New America Fellows are frequently featured, quoted, and cited in the national press, on radio, and on television. More importantly, New America's Fellows have exerted a significant influence on a wide range of critical public policy matters, ranging from economic and fiscal policy to foreign policy, from social and education policy to environmental affairs, and from terrorism and homeland defense to stem cell research.