The Malik Academic Fellowship exists to develop a movement of Christian thought leaders in academia by helping fund promising Christian graduate students pursuing academic careers at secular universities.

The Fellowship is named after Charles Malik (1906-1987), former philosopher and statesman who served as the UN Secretary General and was a key architect responsible for the drafting and adoption of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Malik earned a PhD in philosophy from Harvard and has been granted 50 honorary doctorate degrees. He said, “The university is a clear-cut fulcrum with which to move the world. More potently than by any other means, change the university and you change the world.” We’ve selected Malik for the name not only because he exhibited in vocation the high calling of a missional professor, but also because he lays out in his writings and lectures the conviction of why the task of spawning a movement of missional professors is strategically critical not only for impacting the culture downstream but also for the plausibility of the Gospel message itself. The Gospel is presented not in a vacuum but in the backdrop of the cultural milieu in which it is presented. The ideas forming this cultural milieu are often facilitated directly by ideas stemming from the universities.  

We envision a fraternal community of Christian thought leaders and missional professors who consider the vocational intersection of their discipline and Christian thought. Qualified candidates will have received PhD acceptance letters from major universities, go through a competitive application process, and if awarded will begin as interns and apprentices graduating as Malik Fellows. The work is minimal so that the PhD program can be a success. But we will train in ways neither university departments nor churches will in terms of helping graduate students adopt and live out an integrated Christian vocation. The candidate will be part of a cohort who together will also learn how to launch and sustain a graduate chapter at their local university. With our expansive network, in addition to funding, we will supply coaching, resources, and discipline related mentors, all of which will help the candidate not be a professor who happens to be a Christian, but instead he or she will be a robust Christian professor serving with excellence at a secular university.

To submit a letter of interest contact us at info@ratiochristi.org.