FY25 Mellon Foundation: Sawyer Seminar

We are delighted to announce a pilot for Mellon’s re-envisioning of the Seminars, in celebration of their 30th anniversary this October. Since 1994, the Sawyer Seminar program has provided support for comparative research on historical and contemporary topics of scholarly significance. In recent years, Mellon’s grantmaking has reflected a new strategic priority of imagining and creating socially just, equitable futures. In an effort to align Sawyers more closely with this goal, we are reorienting the program for the 2024 competition and beyond to focus on the study of major social and political challenges that directly impact the structures and practices characterizing the American university.

Through this shift, we seek to celebrate the program’s original mission of elevating critical scholarship while also reframing the Seminars for our present moment, when universities—and, especially, humanities study—are facing a myriad of unprecedented challenges. We envision Sawyer Seminars, which for nearly three decades have been a vehicle for transformative thought, as a useful means through which humanities-grounded, multidisciplinary teams of faculty and other academic leaders can collaboratively address critical issues affecting their campuses. Accordingly, the subject we are asking applicants to consider this year is academic freedom and democracy in the American university.

The overall format of the envisioned seminars remains largely unchanged. The main variation is that, while earlier Sawyer competitions were largely centered on comparative historical study, this year's submissions should focus specifically on the future of the American university. We are especially eager to see innovative humanistic approaches and methods of inquiry brought to bear on the topic of academic freedom and democracy in the American university. More detailed guidelines, a program overview, and an official invitation to submit will be shared over the summer.

In the meantime, on behalf of the Higher Learning team, I thank you for your continued interest in Sawyer Seminars as we enter their next phase. We hope this brief update allows you to initiate plans for your internal search for proposals, and we look forward to being in touch again soon with further details.