The University at Buffalo (UB) has announced a three-year, $2.5 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation in support of a philosopher-led project that aims to demonstrate how diversity, disagreement, and dynamism are crucial resources for fueling an open society.

The grant will support the “Diversity, Dynamism and Inclusion: A New Multi-Method Approach for Studying Liberalism″ project, including funding for a graduate student researcher, three postdoctoral researchers, and a lab manager. Led by Ryan Muldoon, UB professor of philosophy and director of its Philosophy, Politics, and Economics program, the project will combine lab experiments, computer simulations, game-theory modeling, and surveys with hands-on community work to better understand how these concepts shape outcomes in Buffalo, the Rust Belt, and across the country and reveal the mechanisms that liberal institutions—those open to a broad range of ideas and influences—can use to harness diversity in ways that provide both scholarly impact and insights for local policy improvements.

“That dynamism is the core of liberalism,” said Muldoon. “The reason why liberalism is better than its global competitors, such as authoritarianism or different forms of perfectionism, is because it harnesses disagreements and diversity and channels it into productive outcomes.”

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