Cornell University’s Public Voices Thought Leadership Fellowship Program seeks to increase the public impact of top underrepresented thinkers in the U.S. and to help faculty members contribute their ideas to important public conversations via various media outlets.

The yearlong fellowship is run by the OpEd Project, a nonprofit that attempts to diversify the demographics of public discourse by broadening its overwhelming reliance on Western, white, privileged voices.

Public Voices’ master journalists meet with the Cornell fellows four times a year, challenging them to think more expansively not only about their scholarship but also their responsibility for sharing it. Faculty members learn specific techniques on how to break their knowledge into understandable chunks and use their research to make strong arguments.

Fellows receive ongoing support from facilitators and each other via a Google group. Once a month, they have a conference call with a “media gatekeeper,” such as the editor of a major media outlet. When the program ends in September, fellows will have access to the Public Voices’ mentor-editor network of more than 100 high-caliber journalists and editors.

The fellowships began at Cornell in 2014 through the Office of Faculty Development and Diversity. They last one year and are granted to up to 20 individuals at a time.

The 2017 fellows:

• Jill Frank, associate professor, government
• Filiz Garip, professor, sociology
• Valerie Hans, professor, law
• M. Elizabeth Karns, senior lecturer, social statistics
• Joanie Mackowski, associate professor, English
• Anna Katharine Mansfield, associate professor, enology
• Jane Mendle, associate professor, human development
• Riché Richardson, associate professor, Africana studies
• Richard Robinson, associate professor, materials science and engineering
• Amanda Rodewald, professor, natural resources
• Shirley Samuels, professor, English
• Sharon Sassler, professor, policy analysis and management
• Phoebe Sengers, associate professor, information science and science & technology studies
• Kerry Shaw, professor, neurobiology and behavior
• Tracy Stokol, professor, population medicine
• Olúfémi Táíwò, professor, Africana studies 
• Rachel Judith Weil, professor, history
• Nancy Wells, professor, design and environmental analysis
• Dagmawi Woubshet, associate professor, English