Special Symposium: “Whose facts matter!? – Part Two: Epistemic justice & professional values in faculty recruitment, promotion, tenure, and merit processes”

If you are a School of Social Work dean, research dean, faculty affairs dean, senior professor, personnel, promotion, and tenure (PPT) chair, or early and mid-level faculty member, you are important to this discussion, and encouraged to attend. Collectively, we can establish socially just discourse, unpack the challenges, and seek solutions for advancing knowledge democracy in the academy.

Last year a special workshop titled, "Whose facts matter!?: Epistemic justice & professional values in the practice of social work science" was convened. This well-attended and lively session explored, "...how varied forms of power operate in one's sub-field, whose data matter and who decides, systems in academia that perpetuate epistemic injustice, and what this all means for the social impact, use, and relevance of the knowledge we produce."

Workshop participants took to the floor and challenged those in attendance to consider that epistemic injustice has direct and immediate consequences on faculty recruitment, hiring, and career advancement. Part Two of this special session continues the conversation by asking panel members to address the following:

1. Provide a brief framing and recap of general forms of epistemic injustice in science 2. Discuss how the discreditation of people's research focus and scholarship, manifests in faculty evaluation processes 3. How do we dismantle epistemic bias in promotion, tenure, and merit processes

The moderator will bridge the panelists' points with the audience's reflections to illustrate the effects of scholarly devaluation and epistemic injustice on social work science and the communities that social work researchers represent. Share your voice and perspective on why epistemic justice should be a cornerstone of social work science.