The national Workshop in Heterodox Moral and Political Philosophy will be held for the first time at the University of Colorado Boulder under the auspices of the Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization this spring. This is the third iteration of the workshop, which was founded and organized by Daniel Jacobson, Director of the Benson Center. The workshop takes as its purpose to give sympathetic but not uncritical attention to work in progress from younger (primarily not yet tenured) philosophers who work on ideas at odds with the prevailing orthodoxies of the discipline. A group of senior philosophers open to heterodox viewpoints also comments on the papers and serves as mentors.
The invitation-only workshop is the only one of its kind in the country. In addition to providing feedback for works in progress, it also serves to establish a network of open-minded philosophers who support academic freedom and the open exchange of ideas on controversial topics. The workshop endorses no particular ideology, and civil disagreement is expected and encouraged.
Previous workshops have featured papers on such topics as immigration, moral grandstanding, abortion, the nature of conservativism, neo-liberalism, how the notion of epistemic injustice can be applied to conservatives in academia, and other important topics on which professional philosophy imposes pressure to conform to a narrow range of views.
The Workshop in Heterodox Moral and Political Philosophy is made possible by a generous grant from the Snider Foundation.