Ethics of Academic Inquiry Workshop Series: Mark Satta (Wayne State University)
“Freedom of Discussion as a Component of Academic Freedom”
PPE Society Working Group for Works in Progress (online)
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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?
The Spring 2025 Ethics of Academic Inquiry Workshop Series is organized by Lucia Schwarz, Co-Director of the PPE Society’s ELAI Working Group and Visiting Faculty Fellow in the Center for Ethics. 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. 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, email elai.workinggroup@gmail.com.
