This event has been canceled.
Learning to Not-Know: Race and the Epistemology of Ignorance
The educational ideal involves both learning facts about the world and developing our cognitive skills so as to be good knowers ourselves. But in societies structured by domination, certain facts will be too incongruent with the society’s self-image to be allowed to be known. Hence we need to learn both to know and to not-know. This talk will use race and the cognitive consequences of racial domination as an example.
Dr. Charles W. Mills is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center and has previously taught at the University of Oklahoma, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Northwestern University. Mills works in the general area of oppositional political theory, with a particular focus on race. He is the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters, and six books.