Ethical Limits of Academic Inquiry
Co-Directors:
- Lucia Schwarz (Tulane)
- Sam Berstler (MIT)
- Jack Kwong (Appalachian State)
- JP Messina (Purdue)
Contact: elai.workinggroup@gmail.com
Goals:
- Create visibility for the ethical limits of academic inquiry as a topic worthy of scholarly attention,
- Build a community of scholars interested in the topic,
- Promote and provide a platform for sharing research on the ethical limits of academic inquiry, and
- Create and maintain a working bibliography on the topic.
Members:
- Academics from various disciplines with an active interest in the ethical limits of academic inquiry.
See: About | Events | Past Events | Bibliography
About
Over the past few years, the humanities and social sciences have been marked by repeated and polarizing controversies over what kinds of views should and shouldn’t be debated by scholars. Recent examples include Peter Singer’s views on disability and Kathleen Stock’s views on gender. Many scholars hold that some positions should not be defended or engaged with in print or at conferences. Others believe that, in academic inquiry, anything should be up for debate, such that we need to leave room for the offensive and the outrageous.
The Ethical Limits of Academic Inquiry (ELAI) Working Group provides a space for the systematic, scholarly investigation of this meta-debate. While much recent scholarship has concerned itself with related topics, such as “cancel culture,” “free speech on campus,” and “no-platforming,” the difficult question of which views scholars should debate amongst themselves has received comparatively little attention in professional venues.
Pertinent questions are:
- Can we distinguish, on principled grounds, which kinds of views fall inside the ethical limits of academic inquiry and which fall outside?
- How is academic inquiry similar to or different form other kinds of speech?
- What can this tell us about the justifiability of content restrictions?
- How does the aim of excluding certain views from scholarly debate relate to the pursuit of truth?
We regularly host pre-read online workshops for works in progress. If you have a paper draft on the ethics of academic inquiry (any stage of development is fine) and would like feedback from other scholars interested in this topic, please send us an email at elai.workinggroup@gmail.com.
Upcoming Events:
In the Spring 2025 semester, the Ethical Limits of Academic Inquiry Working Group (ELAI) is hosting a series of virtual workshops featuring work-in-progress on the ethics of academic inquiry. All sessions are pre-read, and each 90-minute meeting will be spent on in-depth discussion and feedback. Besides providing the featured authors with valuable feedback, the goal of the workshop series is to build connections between scholars with interests in the ethics of academic inquiry. If you would like to get involved in shaping cutting edge work on the ethics of academic inquiry or simply to meet other academics who are interested in the topic, we would love for you to attend. Please register for the workshops using the links below (each workshop in the series has its own registration link). Papers will be circulated roughly two weeks prior to each workshop.
Wednesday, January 22, 11am CT/12 pm ET
Emily Tilton (University of Southern California)
“Anxious Epistemology”
Abstract: Feminist epistemology must be especially rigorous: distinguishing truth from falsity in our messy social world, rife as it is with ideological illusions that naturalize and obscure the oppressive social order, is a tall task. However, a troubling trend is diminishing feminist epistemology’s political and epistemic possibilities. It is increasingly common for feminist epistemologists to defend their conclusions on moral grounds, despite the availability of—indeed, at the expense of—traditional evidential support. This is a longstanding tendency, though it is made more salient by the recent popularization of moral encroachment. To diagnose this accelerating retreat from the evidence, I introduce the notion of anxious epistemology. Anxious epistemology is a type of dogmatic inquiry, distinguished by an unusual paradox of faith: the anxious inquirer lacks faith that the evidence will bear out their convictions, but they do not lack faith in the truth of their convictions. This spurs the anxious inquirer to take up an adversarial stance towards the evidence; evidence is seen as an obstacle that inquiry must overcome, rather than a resource that guides inquiry. I argue that anxious epistemology undermines feminists’ epistemic and political aims, and that feminists can most easily avoid anxious epistemology by embracing purist epistemological frameworks, which do not grant epistemic significance to moral or practical considerations.
Wednesday, January 29, 10am CT/11am ET
Mark Satta (Wayne State University)
“Freedom of Discussion as a Component of Academic Freedom”
Abstract: While commonly viewed as a defense of free speech, Chapter 2 of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty is, strictly speaking, a defense of freedom of thought and discussion. In this paper, I take seriously the idea that freedom of discussion is distinct from freedom of speech. This requires me to consider what separates discussion from other forms of speaking. My answer is that discussions are, at least loosely, directed toward certain cooperative ends and governed by a set of social norms, including what I call the good faith norm of discussion. I interpret these conditions broadly such that a lot of speech falls under the category of discussion. Still, the category of discussion excludes certain types of action often done through speaking, such as trolling and intentionally spreading disinformation. What might the upshot of all this be for academic freedom? I argue that academic freedom requires robust freedom of discussion for both faculty and students, but that it need not include the same level of robust protection for certain forms of speech that fall outside the bounds of discussion, such as hurling racial epithets, trolling one’s classmates or instructors, or lying about one’s research methods.
Wednesday, February 26, 10am CT/11am ET
Emily McWilliams (University of Dayton)
“Epistemic Injustice and Epistemic Oppression in Collective Inquiry”
Wednesday, March 12, 10am CT/11am ET
Aeon Skoble (Bridgewater State University)
“Discovering and Developing the Compatibility of Viewpoint Diversity with Respect for All Students”
The Spring 2025 Ethics of Academic Inquiry Workshop Series is organized by the PPE Society’s ELAI Working Group (Ethical Limits of Academic Inquiry). It serves to build connections among scholars with interests in the ethics of academic inquiry and to provide scholars with valuable feedback on their work in progress.