Charles Taylor Student Fellowship

CFA 2026-27 RGCS Charles Taylor Student Fellowship

2023-24 Taylor Fellows with Charles Taylor

McGill's Research Group on Constitutional Studies brings together the study of political theory, political and legal philosophy, constitutional and public law, and empirical political science about constitutional institutions (the judiciary, federalism, separation of powers, etc.). It aims to unify these within an overarching research agenda on the foundations, institutions, and principles of political societies. "Constitutional" is construed broadly. It encompasses both the modern sense of the word (the fundamental institutions of a society's formal political and legal order, including institutional and legal norms limiting and directing political decisions) and the ancient (concerned with the match between political regimes and the societies they govern, and so concerned with the norms and rules governing family life, economic relations, and social orders), which means that the modern sense of constitutional law is only one part of a broader set of concerns.. RGCS includes twenty faculty researchers in Political Science, Philosophy, and Law; postdoctoral fellows; a group of about 15 Ph.D. students; and this Fellowship of undergraduates and Master's students in BA, JD/ BCL, and MA programs. The Ph.D. students and postdocs, the meetings of this Fellowship, and many of the faculty offices are together on the 4th floor of the Ferrier Building, centered around the Judith Nisse Shklar (BA '48 MA '49) Reading Room.

Eligibility: The Fellowship is open to Arts undergraduates (U2 or later) studying political theory and related fields including: political, moral, and legal philosophy; intellectual history; and political science and the other social sciences. Students with any major may apply, and most years some students are accepted from majors other than Political Science and Philosophy, but background coursework preparation in political theory and philosophy is a primary consideration in admission. Pursuing an Honours course of study is a significant advantage but not a requirement.

It is also open to students in the MA programs in political science and philosophy, and in the BCL/ JD program in Law.

Applications are welcome from previous Student Fellows hoping to return for another year. Such applications will almost always almost always be accepted for returning BA students who have maintained their academic record, or BA Fellow graduates reapplying for one year as an MA or BCL/ JD student. For students in the second or third year of the MA or the BCL/ JD, that presumption in favor of returning Fellows may be overridden, to ensure that BA students make up at least half of the total group while letting each cohort in the advanced degrees have at least a one-year turn.

Students finishing their degrees and leaving McGill in December are eligible if they are returning undergraduate members of the fellowship group, but not otherwise.

Students who cannot take part in the fall (due to study abroad or a course conflict) are eligible to apply for winter-only participation (1) if they are returning undergraduate members of the fellowship group (these will normally be accepted), or (2) if they have at least one more full academic year as undergraduates and would intend to return for the fellowship then (i.e. 2027-28). Applications from the second group won't be accepted immediately, but may be added to a wait list. Decisions will be made after we know whether any spaces are going to open, for example due to current Fellows graduating in December or studying abroad in the winter.

Award: $500, plus free copies of the books.

Activities: The RGCS Student Fellowship meets nearly every Thursday of the academic year, 4:30-6 pm (and so Fellows should protect that block of time every week), for two kinds of activities.

1) The first, and primary, activity is a reading group with discussion moderated by members of the RGCS faculty. The reading group is not a for-credit course and cannot be taken as one; it is not graded. We read major texts in the history of political, moral, and social thought, along with complementary works of literature.

Fellows are expected to attend the reading group regularly, to do the reading in a timely fashion, and to take an active, thoughtful part in discussion. The group works as a sustained conversation over months, and can't succeed without continuity from week to week.

2) The second activity is linked to the RGCS Lecture Series, which features speakers on the values, institutions, and principles of a free society. They take place in the same time slot, Thursdays 4:30-6 pm. Fellows are expected to attend all of the lectures. The first question at the lectures is reserved for a member of the Fellowship. (And this is worth thinking about during the lecture!) There are also dedicated dinners with the speakers following the lectures; normally half of the Fellows attend each dinner (which means each Fellow should expect to attend half of the dinners in the year).

Other activities: Fellows will also be occasionally invited to other talks, seminars, and conferences in political theory, political philosophy, constitutional law, and the history of political thought; unlike attendance at the lectures, participation in these is optional. There are sometimes small group meetings with visiting speakers outside the RGCS Lecture Series, especially the speakers who give the annual Yan P. Lin Centre Lecture or the GRIPP Charles Taylor Lecture.

Often, and to the extent that resources permit, RGCS supports other academic opportunities for Student Fellows, including travel to academic conferences, seminars, summer schools, and workshops; ARIA research assistantships with members of the RGCS faculty; and self-organized summer reading groups. Sometimes RGCS is able to secure space in the audience for Fellows at other kinds of events; these have included lectures by UN Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon, essayist Roxane Gay, novelist Margaret Atwood, Nobel laureate in Literature Mario Vargas Llosa, and Templeton Prize winner Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks.

RGCS sponsors an annual Arts undergraduate student writing prize; it is not limited to members of the Fellowship but they are encouraged to apply.

Application

To apply, please e-mail rgcs.mcgill [at] gmail.com by 5 pm on August 19. The e-mail should contain:

1) Your year and program (e.g. "U3, Joint Honours Political Science and Philosophy," "MA1, Political Science");

2) the courses you have taken in political theory, political philosophy, the history of political thought, constitutional law, jurisprudence, consittutional-level political science (e.g. comparative federalism), or related fields (e.g. the history of economic thought), including instructor's name and term/year, and the grades you received in them;

3) a brief (1-3 sentence) description of your educational/ intellectual/ career goals after graduating from your current program;

and

4) copied-and-pasted at the bottom of the e-mail (not as an attachment), your "unofficial transcript" from Minerva. If you are an MA1 or JD/BCL1 and this is your first semester at McGill, please include an undergraduate transcript as an attachment.

You may also include

5) mention of any exposure you have had to political theory, constitutional law, and related fields outside of formal coursework, such as conferences and workshops you've attended (including past RGCS events).

Please put all of this in the body of the e-mail, not an attachment.

The first meeting of the Fellowship will be on September 10 at 4:30 pm.

About the Fellowship

A meeting of the Fellowship, discussing Tocqueville's Old Regime and the Revolution Since 2010, the Fellowship has provided intellectual community and academic opportunities to an interdisciplinary group of students interested in reading and discussing books on politics, law, and ethics outside the formal classroom. The Fellowship has been able to help them pursue research opportunities, attend conferences and seminars around the world, and meet with leading scholars, writers, and visiting speakers. The core of the Fellowship lies in the conversation: 18-20 students meeting in the Ferrier library, patiently working their way through important books and arguing about the ideas they contain— discussions that make up the heart of student participation in RGCS and in the Yan P. Lin Centre. For many students, these conversations have provided a valuable transition between a liberal arts education and advanced graduate study in the social sciences, philosophy, or law. For many more, they’ve been a capstone liberal arts experience in their own right.The RGCS Charles Taylor Student Fellowship is the same program that was previously called the RGCS Student Fellowship. Thanks to the support of generous alums and other donors, it has been renamed for professor emeritus and McGill alum Charles Taylor '52.