Mather Snell

Mather is a Junior University Scholar from Princeton, New Jersey, concentrating in Philosophy, English, and Great Texts, with a secondary major in Political Science. He lived in the Honors Residential College during his first two years at Baylor and plans to attend law school after graduation. Outside of the classroom, Mather is highly engaged in extracurricular and professional activities centered on law, public policy, and religious liberty. On campus, he is involved in the Getterman Fellows Program, where he serves as a mentor and co-chair, as well as the student journal The Standard. His professional experience includes interning at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty during the spring of 2026, where he researched policy developments and assisted in defending the right for all to practice their religion without discrimination. 

Additionally, during the summer of 2026, he served as a Shaftesbury Fellow with the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy, where he completed a research project culminating in a publishable paper and participated in seminars with leading scholars.

Mather’s favorite reading list book is Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney. For his thesis, he is exploring the relationship between pluralism, conscience, and rationalism in modern liberal political thought, with particular attention to thinkers such as Isaiah Berlin, John Rawls, and William Galston. When asked for his advice to new students, Mather shares: “Don’t let education be intimidated. It is always important to remember that Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life that can be a joyous response to the world around us.”