The Role of College Educators in Combating Epistemic Injustice

• In Event: Pursuing Justice, Seeking Equity

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the role of college educators in responding to conditions of epistemic injustice within their institutions. Pedagogy alone cannot bring about epistemic justice in higher education, for no individual epistemic agent can single-handedly transform their epistemic environment. The roots of such injustices are structural and thus require structural interventions. However, college educators do retain some agency in their classrooms. We argue that they can and should take steps to foster just relations within the epistemic communities of their classrooms—calling for pedagogy that both recognizes the unjust features of the broader epistemic environment and responds to the unique forms of epistemic injustice that manifest in the classroom, including those rooted in pedagogical norms of liberal education.

Authors

• Caitlin Murphy Brust, Stanford University

• Rebecca M. Taylor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign