Epistemic authority of science and its current contestations

Our esteemed guests Professor Francisco Ramirez (Graduate School of Education, Stanford University) and Professor Yasemin Soysal (WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Freie Universität Berlin) will address these questions in their guest lectures.

Epistemic authority of science and its current contestations

Lecture held by Professor Soysal

Modern science can be understood both in terms of shared epistemological norms of knowledge generation with the aim of problem-solving and as an institution that supplies meaning and legitimacy to collective reality and societal organization.  Although globally most people agree with science's epistemological authority, in recent years, anti-science attitudes, held by a minority and voiced by populist leaders, have become manifest in both liberal and non-liberal regimes.  Using a unique cross-national representative survey, we map (pro- and anti-) science attitudes and their underlying determinants.

Educational Contestations in a Changing World Society

Jieun Song, Minju Choi, Francisco O. Ramirez (Stanford University)

Lecture held by Professor Ramirez

From a world society perspective, common national educational developments are driven by global cultural models that dominated an international liberal order. These models emphasized the centrality of education as an institution, both as a source of human capital and as an inherent human right. Epistemic communities and international organizations circulated these models influencing national educational policies and reforms. However, in recent decades the international liberal order has been challenged with social movements across the political spectrum questioning the value and authority of education in this order. Earlier educational mandates to be more inclusive are attacked with the rights of women, immigrants, and minorities often targeted. Confidence in knowledge grounded in education and science also gets undercut. In a more fragmented world society, educational contestations increase, reflecting surges in nationalist, populist, and traditional illiberal ideas. We reflect on the impact of these challenges on the centrality of education and propose future research directions to ascertain which educational developments are likely to continue to be globally valued and which are more apt to erode.