The Fund for American Studies
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Campus Transparency Fellowship

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TFAS Campus Transparency Fellows visit Annapolis, Maryland, to discuss investigative basics with professional journalists.

Thank you for your interest in the Campus Transparency Fellowship. Applications for the 2026-27 Fellowship are closed.

Applications are open for the 2026-27 Campus Transparency Fellowship. Early action applications are due by July 8, 2026. Rolling applications are due by July 22, 2026.

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TFAS’s newest program to support collegiate journalists working to produce high-quality investigative journalism at their respective colleges and universities.

Founded in 2025, the Campus Transparency Fellowship seeks to uniquely equip passionate student journalists with the tools, connections and experience needed to produce high-quality investigative journalism at their respective institutions. By attending monthly sessions with select faculty and two bookending conferences, receiving editorial guidance and placement assistance from TFAS staff, and earning a stipend on a per-article and participatory basis, Campus Transparency Fellows learn to apply rigorous journalistic standards to shine a light on issues at their home universities, including administrative malpractice, free speech violations, campus antisemitism and more.

The Campus Transparency Fellowship offers diverse programming and resources to participants. The 2025-26 curriculum included:

  • Monthly webinars with industry professionals. Fellows discussed topics such as source cultivation with The Free Press’s Washington correspondent Audrey Fahlberg, Novak ’24, and records requests with Manhattan Institute’s John Sailer. TFAS hosted The Economist’s senior editor James Bennet as the class’s commencement speaker.
  • Bookending conferences with specialized curriculum. The opening conference, held in Annapolis, MD from August 7-9th, featured keynote speaker Eliana Johnson, editor-in-chief of The Washington Free Beacon, and introduced fellows to investigative basics in conversation with professional journalists from outlets such as National Review and CBS. Fellows attended the TFAS National Student Journalism Honors conference in Dallas, TX, in late March, on a separate curriculum track that covered professional development and legal changes to higher education, featuring faculty from The Wall Street Journal and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.
  • Article workshopping, editing assistance and publication placement from TFAS staff. Fellows shone a light on issues at their home universities, including administrative malpractice, free speech violations, campus antisemitism and more. Their work has appeared in national publications such as The Washington Free Beacon, The Carolina Journal, National Review and The New York Post.

Read about the inaugural class here: Campus Transparency Fellowship: Students to Publish In-Depth Campus Investigations