For Peter Meilaender, professor of political science, the opportunity to embark on a research fellowship next spring at Biola University is a “chance to sit down, free of distractions” to work on a subject that has piqued his interest for almost a decade.
After applying last October, Meilaender was awarded a research fellowship at the Center for Christian Thought (CCT) at Biola University, a Christian, California-based school. According to its website, the CCT awards a number of research fellowships, with all research “[focusing] on a theme of contemporary relevance and importance, which has bearing on both academic and popular issues.” The theme of 2014-2015 at CCT is “Intellectual Virtue and Civil Discourse.”
Specifically, Meilaender will be embarking on a study of loyalty, a virtue that he described as involving a moral tension “between our duties toward particular persons with whom we stand in special relationships and our universal obligations toward all human beings.” In relation to the theme of the CCT, Meilaender hopes that “by defending a virtue that involves commitment to others without requiring ideological agreement, I … hope to strengthen an ideal of civility in our public discourse.”
Meilaender became interested in the subject of loyalty through his work on immigration in a book published ten years ago (and currently available in the Houghton library entitled Toward a Theory of Immigration.) During that study, he was interested in using loyalty as a “positive case for special preference to fellow citizens” in the broader immigration debate which, by contrast, according to Meilaender, currently favors open-border policies. Since his introduction to loyalty through that study, Meilaender has explored the topic in greater detail and even offers a course entitled “Loyalty” through the political science department.
Though his planned research on loyalty next spring is not an official sequel to Toward a Theory of Immigration, Meilaender feels that “intellectually, this is a sequel to the immigration book.” He also expressed his hope that the “three or four conference papers” that he completes during the fellowship might result in four book chapters for a book on loyalty.
Because the fellowship will take him away from campus, and consequently decrease the political science department by half, Meilaender will be teaching a full load of courses next fall, which include “In Search of Justice,” “Introduction to Political Thought,” and “International Law and Organization” in addition to supervising the political science senior seminar.