





































































Analytic Teaching and Philosophical Praxis


ANALYTIC TEACHING AND PHILOSOPHICAL PRAXIS VOL. 40, ISSUE 2 (2020) 

  
 

1 
 

 

Combatting Epistemic Violence against Young Activists  
 

 

Sarah Vitale, Ph.D, and Owen Miller  
 
 
 

Introduction 

 
  
oung people are advocating for social and political change. In response to the worsening 
climate crisis, young people have organized several movements, including the Sunrise 

Movement and the School Strike for Climate movement. Following the mass shooting at Marjory 
Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, students led a nationwide movement for gun 
control. Young people led the charge for justice following the death of Trayvon Martin and have 
played significant roles in the Black Lives Matter movement. Members of the climate, gun control, 
and anti-racism movements are well-educated on their respective issues and have articulated clear 
political and economic aims.1 Young people have rallied around concerns for their shared futures, 
using knowledge of climate science, gun dangers, and white supremacy and their correspondingly 
rational interests in a safe and ecologically healthy world, to create sound platforms for reform. Even 
though their positions are sound, many adults believe they could not possibly understand the scope of 
the issues or have the tools to respond to the crises. Their beliefs are often dismissed as childish 
because adults assume that children are too naïve to understand the full extent of issues like the 
climate crisis and what it would take to address them. The result is that their position as young 
persons who must endure the effects of current policies and practices is discounted and they are 
subject to epistemic injustice, a concept introduced by Miranda Fricker, and epistemic oppression, a 
concept introduced by Kristie Dotson. 
   

In this paper, we seek to establish the way in which young people are subject to two forms of 
epistemic oppression in testimony, what Dotson calls testimonial quieting and testimonial 
smothering. Testimonial quieting happens when a hearer fails to identify a speaker as a person who 
knows about whatever subject about which the speaker is offering testimony (Dotson, “Tracking 
Epistemic Violence” 242), and testimonial smothering occurs when a speaker stifles their own 
testimony to avoid being the object of prejudice or ridicule on the part of hearers (244). We also 
consider how young people are subject to what Fricker calls hermeneutical injustice, which occurs 
when a group is less able to make sense of their experiences due to an imbalance of social power. We 

                                                 
1 See the principles articulated by the Sunrise Movement (“Sunrise Principles”). Also, see the speech given by activist Greta 
Thunberg to the British House of Parliament (Thunberg). For an account of the position held by the Never Again MSD 
activists, see Hogg and González. For a list of the demands by one offshoot of the larger Black Lives Matter movement, see 
“About.”  See also an op-ed by Thandiwe Abdullah, 15, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter LA Youth Vanguard, on the 
Parkland shooting and the response to the Never Again MSD activists (Abdullah).  
 

Y 



ANALYTIC TEACHING AND PHILOSOPHICAL PRAXIS VOL. 40, ISSUE 2 (2020) 

  
 

2 
 

examine three different scenarios of quieting: quieting of Parkland activists following a shooting at 
their school; quieting of Dream Defenders and Black Lives Matter activists following the shooting 
death of Trayvon Martin; and quieting of climate activists. Because of the different ways these groups 
were quieted, we consider the importance of analyses attentive to how race and other identity factors 
intersect with age to compound the epistemic oppression faced by young people. We then argue that 
Philosophy for Children (P4C) can help remedy epistemic oppression by helping young people who 
might otherwise stifle their testimony develop their voices, helping adult facilitators better listen to 
young people as equal interlocutors, and helping young people become adults who are less likely to 
quiet the testimony of any specific group in public discourse or elsewhere. 

 
Epistemic Injustice and Epistemic Oppression 

 
While many philosophers have examined the damage done to individuals and social groups by 

social and political injustices, few had explicitly considered what it meant to harm someone as a 
knower before Miranda Fricker’s groundbreaking work Epistemic Injustice. Fricker examines how a 
special wrong, which she calls an epistemic injustice, is inflicted upon someone when they are 
damaged in their capacity as a knower (20). In testimonial injustice, the first type of epistemic justice, 
the audience fails to take the speaker seriously as a knower (4). The audience does not give the speaker 
what they need, namely an audience that is open to hearing them and able to hear them without 
prejudice, and a successful linguistic exchange fails to take place. The other type, hermeneutical 
injustice, occurs when “a gap in collective interpretive resources puts someone at an unfair advantage 
when it comes to making sense of their social experiences” (Fricker 1). Hermeneutical injustices exist 
when a group is unable to explain, describe, and assign meaning to a common set of experiences, 
often because the dominant social group fails to recognize these experiences as worth understanding 
or even as real. As social power dictates the creation of concepts, the group with relatively less power is 
left with fewer concepts at hand to explain everyday encounters.  

 
Kristie Dotson has also developed an important account of epistemic harm, which, while 

overlapping with Fricker’s account, differs in a few key ways. Dotson examines what she calls epistemic 
violence in testimony and claims that it relies in large part on pernicious ignorance, or reliable and 
ongoing ignorance about a group that causes harm (“Tracking Epistemic Violence” 238). Pernicious 
ignorance often manifests itself in negative stereotypes (243). Dotson defines epistemic violence in 
testimony or epistemic oppression as “a refusal, intentional or unintentional, of an audience to 
communicatively reciprocate a linguistic exchange owing to pernicious ignorance” (238). Dotson 
characterizes Fricker’s notion of epistemic injustice as a “species of epistemic oppression” (238). 
Dotson argues, however, that Fricker misses a type of epistemic injustice, which Dotson calls 
contributory injustice. Contributory injustice is “caused by an epistemic agent’s situated ignorance, in 
the form of willful hermeneutical ignorance, in maintaining and utilizing structurally prejudiced 
hermeneutical resources that result in epistemic harm to the epistemic agency of a knower” (Dotson, 
“A Cautionary Tale” 31). While Fricker claims that hermeneutical injustice occurs because social 
power dictates the creation of concepts, Dotson emphasizes that there is rarely only one set of 
hermeneutical resources at any given time. Contributory injustice occurs when someone fails to use 
available hermeneutical resources created by a marginalized group and only uses the prejudiced 



ANALYTIC TEACHING AND PHILOSOPHICAL PRAXIS VOL. 40, ISSUE 2 (2020) 

  
 

3 
 

hermeneutical resources of the oppressor. 
 

Both Fricker and Dotson’s contributions are essential to our project, but their differences, while 
significant, bear less on our argument. Instead we borrow Fricker and Dotson’s arguments on the 
epistemic oppression of women and people of color to apply to children, which is something few 
thinkers have done to date. Those thinkers who have begun the conversation about epistemic 
injustice and children have opened the door to an important field of inquiry. Karin Murris, for 
instance, has applied Fricker’s concepts to epistemic injustice against Black children in educational 
settings. Murris holds that the mistaken and influential views of developmental psychology 
disadvantage children by positioning them as partial humans and do not allow for the fact that adults 
may learn from children (254). Michael D. Burroughs and Deborah Tollefsen consider epistemic 
injustice against children in forensic contexts and argue that pervasive prejudices determine whether 
children are considered credible in courtroom scenarios (369). We engage in a similar project, 
focusing on testimonial quieting and smothering of young activists. 
 

Testimonial Quieting and Smothering of Youth Activists 
 

Dotson explains that testimonial quieting and smothering result from pernicious ignorance, and 
we contend that ignorance regarding children’s and young people’s intellectual and rational capacities 
are types of pernicious ignorance. In the traditional educational setting and in public spaces, the 
interpretative tools employed by children are often dismissed as undeveloped or simply incorrect. 
Children are often seen as ignorant and incapable of forming rational beliefs without first being 
taught how, when, and with what facts to do so. Ignorance regarding young people’s ability to know 
shows up in terms adults use to describe children’s interpretations of the world, like “childish,” 
“naive,” and “uneducated.” These terms do not necessarily assail the content of children’s 
understandings (in the way “irrational” or “misinformed” might), but rather the thinkers themselves. 
To call a child’s wishful thinking “childish” does not dismiss the value or accuracy of the belief’s 
content, but dismisses the child’s position as a knower. In what follows, we consider testimonial 
quieting of young activists in the public sphere, looking at three examples of recent youth activism: 
the youth-led climate movement, Never Again MSD, and Black Lives Matter. 

 
1. Testimonial Quieting 

 
We can see a clear example of testimonial quieting in the response to the student leaders of the 

climate movement, specifically in an encounter between representatives from the Sunrise Movement 
and Senator Dianne Feinstein. Around fifteen young people, from age ten to eighteen, visited 
Feinstein’s office to present her a letter and request that she support the Green New Deal, a proposed 
economic stimulus package that addresses the climate crisis and economic inequality. Feinstein 
responded that she was not in support of the proposed measure, as she thought it was not feasible and 
instead had co-authored an alternative bill (Sunrise Movement Bay Area). When the children 
responded that she should listen to their reasons, she asked their age and dismissed them with the 
statement, “you didn’t vote for me.” She also told the crowd, “I know what I’m doing.” This is an 
example of quieting because Feinstein dismissed these children’s ability to offer testimony about the 



ANALYTIC TEACHING AND PHILOSOPHICAL PRAXIS VOL. 40, ISSUE 2 (2020) 

  
 

4 
 

climate crisis by virtue of a social prejudice about the naiveté of children’s understanding of political 
(and scientific and economic) concepts. 

 
Despite her claim, Feinstein cannot properly “know what [she’s] doing.” If to know something 

means to know the truth, she becomes further from the truth as she excludes significant viewpoints 
from her evaluation of the climate crisis. She is acting in a way that has obfuscated the actual 
consequences of her actions by quieting the Sunrise protesters, who have a relevant standpoint 
regarding the need to act as young people who will endure the consequences of today’s climate policy. 
In refusing to engage with the students as rational agents, she has excluded the experiences and needs 
of children from her evaluation of the climate crisis due to children’s lack of social power. In the case 
of the climate crisis discourse and this example in particular, the testimony of children is especially 
relevant to the production of climate policy, as children are the ones who will have to deal with the 
most significant consequences of present decisions. As such, we should afford special attention to the 
standpoint of children regarding the climate crisis. Feinstein’s perspective toward these young people 
is in keeping with many educators, politicians, and other adults: you don’t know what you’re talking 
about; let the adults handle it. 

 
But the adults often do not handle things, as the Parkland students know too well. They formed 

Never Again MSD in the aftermath of a mass shooting at their school in February 2018 (Seelinger). 
The movement began as a Twitter hashtag—#NeverAgain—and transformed into one of the largest 
nationwide protests on March 24, 2018 (Lopez). The goal of the group was to prevent future 
shootings by advocating for universal background checks and influencing elections. The students were 
adept organizers and public speakers, effectively using social media and mobilizing groups around the 
country to act quickly. 

 
Several influential people publicly attempted to silence the leaders of the movement. A 

Republican candidate for the Maine House called Emma González, one of the youth leaders who 
survived the shooting, a “skinhead lesbian,” and David Hogg, another movement leader, a “bald-faced 
liar” (Stevens). Gonzalez also appeared in a doctored video tearing up the Constitution (Mezzofiore). 
In the original video, which was posted online by Teen Vogue, she and friends tore up a gun-target 
poster. While it is unclear who doctored the video, the altered one was shared on the right-wing 
forum 4chan and then on Twitter, by verified users including actor Adam Baldwin (Wanshel). David 
Hogg, another movement leader, has also received criticism from the conservative media. RedState, an 
influential right-wing blog with 206,400 Twitter followers, for instance, posted doubts as to whether 
Hogg was even at school on the day of the attack (Bromwich).  

 
The vitriol against the young activists came from gun supporters, who wanted to discredit the 

movement. However, there was significant blowback against the young activists’ detractors, even from 
those who were against the movement’s aims. After an aide to Republican Florida legislator Shawn 
Harrison called Gonzalez and Hogg crisis actors on Twitter, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) 
defended the students (Astor). He tweeted that “[c]laiming some of the students on tv after #Parkland 
are actors is the work of a disgusting group of idiots with no sense of decency” (Rubio). The blowback 
from figures like Rubio demanded response, and Harrison apologized and fired his aide 

https://twitter.com/hashtag/Parkland?src=hash
https://twitter.com/hashtag/Parkland?src=hash


ANALYTIC TEACHING AND PHILOSOPHICAL PRAXIS VOL. 40, ISSUE 2 (2020) 

  
 

5 
 

(@ShawnHarrisonFL). The Maine candidate who criticized Hogg and Gonzalez received criticism from 
other Republicans, and in response he ended his candidacy (Stevens). 

 
Similar blowback has not occurred, however, against those who have tried to silence youth 

leaders and participants of the Black Lives Matter movement and its predecessors. Young Black people 
in Florida began the fight against gun violence after the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012, six years 
before the shooting in Parkland. The shooting death of Martin resulted in the formation of youth-led 
movements such as the Dream Defenders and the Million Hoodies Movement, groups that were 
formed before the BLM movement began in 2013. In 2012, high school and college-aged Dream 
Defenders occupied the capitol building in Tallahassee for 31 days, demanding an end to the stand-
your-ground law which was invoked during George Zimmerman’s trial (Alvarez). The young people 
were silenced when the lawmakers refused to speak with them. Scott eventually met with them during 
their occupation, but still refused to hold a special session of the legislature.  

 
The BLM activists have received many criticisms, but Republican lawmakers have never publicly 

come to their defense. For the most part, Republicans had nothing to say to the teen activists in the 
early years of the movement. They did not take young Black people seriously at all, not even enough 
to criticize them. Also, when young people engage in direct action—through actions such as 
interrupting Bernie Sanders or Martin O’Malley during the 2016 presidential primary to foreground 
racial justice concerns or holding “die-ins” at restaurants in major cities during brunch—they are 
criticized by their ostensible supporters, white progressives, who question their methods and targets 
(Lind). The BLM activists are often told that they should be more peaceful like the Civil Rights 
activists before them, and even Civil Rights activists like Barbara Reynolds, John Lewis, and Andrew 
Young have criticized the movement (Reynolds; Theoharis). Oprah Winfrey also criticized BLM for its 
leaderless structure and what she saw as its lack of concrete demands (“Oprah Winfrey’s 
Comments”).2 Then, while she did not offer support to the Dream Defenders, she offered $500,000 
to the MSD movement (@oprah). The Dream Defenders and subsequent young BLM activists have 
encountered opponents on all sides. 

 
Black students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High as well as other young people involved in the 

BLM movement have noted the divergent responses to their protests and the Never Again MSD 
protests. In a press conference in the days after the March for Our Lives protest in Washington, which 
she attended, Marjory Stoneman junior Tyah-Amoy Roberts stated, “The Black Lives Matter 
movement has been addressing this topic since the murder of Trayvon Martin, since 2012. Yet we’ve 
never seen this kind of support for our cause. And we surely do not feel that the lives or voices of 
minorities are as valued as our white counterparts” (Green).  A clear example of testimonial quieting of 
young BLM activists occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, in fact, a week before the shooting. 
A student published a critique of the BLM movement in the school newspaper, calling it “ridiculous” 
and saying its participants “seem to be good for nothing but creating mistrust between civilians and 
police” (Green). In a Black History Month presentation, several Black students responded to the letter 
and defended the movement. A teacher cut off their mic, literally silencing them, and ushered them 

                                                 
2 In August 2016, over sixty organizations associated with the BLM movement released a policy platform with six central 
demands (Alcindor).  

https://www.dreamdefenders.org/
https://www.millionhoodies.net/
https://policy.m4bl.org/
https://policy.m4bl.org/


ANALYTIC TEACHING AND PHILOSOPHICAL PRAXIS VOL. 40, ISSUE 2 (2020) 

  
 

6 
 

off the stage. The administration defended the teacher’s actions, saying that they prevented the 
students from finishing their address because the speech was not rehearsed or a planned part of the 
show. An article on the event indicates that it was a “last-minute decision by some of the black student 
organizers” to read their response letter aloud at the event (Green). The students were silenced, unable 
to communicate their message to their classmates, teachers, and community members. 

 
It is clear that the type of epistemic silencing experienced by each group is different. In the first 

example offered above, the climate activists are dismissed by someone who is, ostensibly, on their side. 
Feinstein says she understands the dangers of the climate crisis, but she does not support the Green 
New Deal because she does not believe it is feasible. Her dismissal of the young people stems in large 
part from the fact that they are not a constituency that matters to her—they are not of the age of 
majority. However, they recognize that it is not feasible to ignore the exigencies of the climate crisis 
and fail to act swiftly. The Never Again MSD activists are dismissed, on the other hand, by rightwing 
figures with a clear pro-gun agenda, who often focus on the young people’s age to discredit them. 
However, not all of those who were ideologically opposed to the students spoke out against them, as it 
became less than politically expedient to do so. The students appeared sympathetic to the public 
because of the tragedy they faced, so they gained a perhaps politically privileged position for a moment 
from which to act. 

 
We cannot assume, therefore, that because a person is young, they will face epistemic injustice 

in the precise way the climate activists have. The epistemic violence faced by the Dream Defenders 
and the young BLM activists is very different from both the above examples. The young Black activists 
are often ignored outright or dismissed with hostility, not only by those who would appear 
ideologically opposed to their aims, but also by those who agree with their goals but question their 
methods. 

 
One factor that makes sense of the treatment of the Black BLM activists and Dream Defenders 

and the white MSD activists is the racial frames around how we see youth and childhood. Following 
the killing of Trayvon Martin, many images shared by the media depicted him as adult-like and thus 
more dangerous (Adler; Pareene). Though he was a 17-year-old with Skittles in his hand, the images 
shared by conservative news outlets depicted him as a formidable presence on the street, perhaps a 
dangerous adult, justifying the attack on him (Adler). Holding a pellet gun in his hand, Tamir Rice, 
who was 12 years old when he was shot and killed, appeared threatening and perhaps adult-like to the 
officer, even though the 911 caller indicated that the gun was “probably fake” and the person holding 
it “probably” a child (Never and Lowery). These young people did not appear young and innocent to 
the people who killed them, and subsequently the media does not portray them as such. Studies have 
confirmed that young Black people suffer from an adultification bias. In a series of studies, black boys 
appeared more like adults than their white peers (Goff et. al.). Researchers have also found that adults 
consider Black girls as young as 5 as needing less protection and more independent than their white 
peers (Epstein, Black, and González). It is plausible, then, that the public has been more sympathetic 
toward the MSD activists because they see them as youthful and innocent, and they sympathize less 
with young Black people who suffer. The way that epistemic injustice works towards young Black 
activists and white activists is therefore very different, especially when their activism is a result of 
trauma and gun violence.  



ANALYTIC TEACHING AND PHILOSOPHICAL PRAXIS VOL. 40, ISSUE 2 (2020) 

  
 

7 
 

 
2. Testimonial Smothering 

 
When young people routinely face testimonial quieting and become accustomed to being 

dismissed, they may also begin to experience smothering, the second type of epistemic violence 
Dotson identifies. Testimonial smothering occurs when a speaker stifles their own testimony to avoid 
being the object of prejudice or ridicule on the part of hearers (Dotson, 244). Also, and although 
Dotson does not offer this as a reason, testimonial smothering may occur when people do not want to 
waste their time offering an account that they know will not be heard. While tangible examples of 
smothering are harder pin down—as it is the non-sharing of testimony that constitutes smothering—it 
is fruitful to at least illustrate a couple plausible descriptions of how it might occur among children in 
educational settings. 

 
Black students, for example, often have a different experience in schools than white children. 

For instance, Black children receive a disproportionate level of discipline from their teachers. They are 
much more likely to receive out-of-school suspensions than their white peers (“K-12 Education”). And 
federal investigations show that these punishments occur even if the students of color are not causing 
more problems (Staples). As we have seen, the adultification bias impacts Black children as young as 5 
years old, and research shows that even very young Black children—preschoolers—are punished more 
than their white classmates (“Data Snapshot: School Discipline”). When the classroom appears to be a 
place where they are not wanted, Black students may be more likely to smother their own testimony 
when in that classroom or outside. 

 
Another example might involve the smothering of testimony in light of a hegemonic discourse. 

Consider, for example, a Native American child learning about Christopher Columbus in public 
school. The Native American child has some ideas about Columbus, having heard her parents discuss 
Columbus’s catalytic role in Native genocides and mass slavery. The textbook the Native American 
child is reading in school, however, focuses on Columbus’s “heroic discovery” of the Americas more 
than the tragedies enacted thereafter. Furthermore, the child may have learned that her 
understandings are untrustworthy and childish and may have had experiences in the past where her 
testimony was rejected. Or she may trust her family’s account and not want to waste her time 
correcting an educator she knows will not believe her. If this child has been the victim of epistemic 
injustices, it is plausible that she will not offer her testimony about Columbus as received from her 
parents. Wanting to avoid the anxiety or embarrassment of offering a “false” understanding, or simply 
wanting to pass the tests and earn good grades, this child may smother herself, and it is further 
plausible that the child will abandon her own understanding of Columbus in favor of the school’s. 
The consequences of this smothering involve not only preventing other students (and potentially the 
teacher) from developing a more nuanced view of Columbus, but also significant cognitive dissonance 
for the Native child. 

 
3. Hermeneutical and Contributory Injustice 

 
Another reason that the voices of young people may not be heard is that they are often deprived 

of the hermeneutical resources to make sense of their own experiences and suffer from what Fricker 



ANALYTIC TEACHING AND PHILOSOPHICAL PRAXIS VOL. 40, ISSUE 2 (2020) 

  
 

8 
 

calls hermeneutical injustice. In this case, it is not that they actively smother their own testimony, but 
that “their social situation is such that a collective hermeneutical gap prevents them...from making 
sense of an experience which it is strongly in their interests to render intelligible” (Fricker 7). Fricker 
offers as an example of hermeneutical injustice women who were victims of sexual harassment at work 
before the term sexual harassment was created (1).  Fricker explains that the “powerful tend to have 
appropriate understandings of their experiences ready to draw on as they make sense of their social 
experiences, whereas the powerless are more likely to find themselves having some social experiences 
through a glass darkly, with at best ill-fitting meanings to draw on in the effort to render them 
intelligible” (149). In contributory injustice, Dotson explains, the oppressed have their own set of 
hermeneutical resources, but the oppressor fails to use them to understand relevant experiences (“A 
Cautionary Tale” 31). The oppressor instead uses the concepts they have created, which are often 
prejudiced against the oppressed group.  

 
In the first case, young people, therefore, may not have the hermeneutical resources to 

understand their experiences because they have not been afforded the opportunity to contribute to 
the creation of concepts (Fricker 6). There are fewer concepts adequate to accounting for their 
particular experiences. They may therefore not participate in activist struggles because they do not 
have concepts to name their disenfranchisement. In the case of contributory injustice, they have the 
appropriate resources, but since the dominant group fails to recognize these resources, young people 
may smother themselves and consider the activist venture a lost cause. 
 
4. Promoting Epistemic Justice through Philosophy for Children (P4C) 

 
Epistemic injustice against young people is pervasive. While we have examined epistemic 

injustice largely in the public sphere, one place to combat it is in schools. We contend that many 
epistemic problems are cultivated in traditional educational settings because the pedagogy assumes a 
mistaken account of the knower and follows what Paolo Freire calls the “banking model” of 
education. The banking model relies on an account of the knowing subject as an atomistic, 
independent, even disembodied knower, who encounters phenomena as discrete things to know 
through mastery or acquisition. The subject appears to approach these phenomena from a bird’s eye 
perspective or a “view from nowhere” (Nagel 67-70). The material this knower encounters in textbooks 
and on standardized exams passes itself off as universal knowledge. 

 
There are multiple problems with this model. First, it in fact privileges a particular type of 

knowledge, that of middle-class and wealthy, white, able-bodied, native English-speaking Americans. 
The textbooks and exams take the particular experience of one group of people and raise it to the level 
of the universal. Insofar as it raises the experiences of a particular group of people to the level of the 
universal, it covers over the knowledges and experiences of marginalized people. Second, insofar as it 
frames certain knowledge as universal, it ignores the way knowledge is situated and context-specific. 
Freire explains that implicit “in the banking concept is the assumption of a dichotomy between 
human beings and the world: a person is merely in the world, not with the world or with others; the 
individual is spectator, not re-creator” (85). The person is not portrayed to be a situated knower, who 
in fact creates a world. She is rather a disembodied knower. 

 



ANALYTIC TEACHING AND PHILOSOPHICAL PRAXIS VOL. 40, ISSUE 2 (2020) 

  
 

9 
 

In the banking model, however, the student is not yet a powerful, atomistic knower, though that 
may be a goal. During her education, that knower is her teacher, and the student is a passive learner. 
The learner is not understood to be a richly thoughtful, question-forming and answer-seeking agent. 
Rather, the learner is treated as a kind of epistemic tabula rasa or empty vessel.3 The learner is not 
seen as having a particular context or as able to contribute her own experiences to the learning 
process. In the perceived absence of young people’s meaningful “starting point” in the learning 
process, educators use the banking model to fill these empty vessels with textbook and lecture content. 
The epistemic and testimonial capacities of young people, and thereby their ability to answer 
meaningful questions, are neglected as educators assume that learners are not yet knowers. In this 
process each learning agent is considered interchangeable—all learners, some exceptions granted, read 
the same textbooks and hear the same lectures—reflecting a disembodied, decontextualized model of 
the knower.  This phenomenon occurs both in education and in the public sphere: young people are 
thought to have nothing to contribute to the production of knowledge and discourse and can only 
endure the consequences of political and educational discourses.4 

 
P4C is a methodology that gives children, those on the downside of epistemic oppression, the 

license to fight back. P4C shifts the dynamic from a top-down flow of information to a bottom-up or 
non-hierarchical exchange. While many young people already have little trouble offering testimony, as 
we can see in the examples above, still others suffer from testimonial smothering, and P4C is a way to 
address this by helping young people gain confidence. In addition, P4C may help the adults who 
participate as facilitators become less likely to smother young people’s testimony, both in the P4C 
context and outside of it. Finally, P4C may help the young people who participate grow into adults 
who are less likely to quiet young people. In this section, we aim to demonstrate key ways the structure 
of P4C helps remedy the epistemic injustices committed against young people. 

 
P4C is a movement that emphasizes the ability young people have to critically analyze the world 

and themselves and the importance of open-ended inquiry. A key method P4C employs to help young 
people critically engage with their world and promote epistemic equality is by establishing 
“Communities of Philosophical Inquiry.” Communities of Philosophical Inquiry (CPI) share much in 
common with Paolo Freire’s “problem-posing” method, which he designed to work with peasant 
workers in Brazil. Freire argues that the most liberatory mode of education is one determined and 
driven by the oppressed themselves (Freire 126). Both methods are effective at working with 
epistemically and otherwise disadvantaged groups, such that those groups can find ways to articulate 
their own problems and needs. CPIs often, but need not, take place within the K-12 setting; they can 
take place at refugee resettlement centers, youth groups, in student-led movements, in border 
communities, and elsewhere. While many student-led movements are already democratic and 
challenge established hierarchies, the P4C movement is a way for adults and educators to act as allies 
and combat prejudices against young people. A CPI is a collective endeavor where young people and a 

                                                 
3 Philosophers and developmental psychologists have considered the young person to be a blank slate. See, for example, 
Locke 33 and Piaget 38.  
4 Young people are not only denied the vote, as in most countries the voting age is 18, but they are also denied any type of 
involvement in the political process approximating the vote. (We are indebted to REDACTED for helping us strengthen 
this line of our argument.) 



ANALYTIC TEACHING AND PHILOSOPHICAL PRAXIS VOL. 40, ISSUE 2 (2020) 

  
 

10 
 

facilitator do philosophy together. Participants are able to take an active role in the development of 
understanding, restructuring the learning process so that the participants exercise power collectively. 

 
We do not mean to suggest that a CPI is merely a formless friendship circle where rationality is 

abandoned. Rather, a CPI is a situation in which critical thinking and rational dialogue are part and 
parcel of young people’s flourishing. Contrary to many prejudices against young people’s ability to 
produce valuable discourse, a CPI does not produce understandings about monsters under the bed 
except perhaps to provide rational interpretations of what purpose narratives about monsters serve in 
the lives of children. By directly building rationality and dialogical learning into the discussion, a CPI 
makes the imaginative curiosity of children into a tool for gaining genuine understanding about the 
world.  

 
Elements of the Community of Philosophical Inquiry 

 
A CPI usually develops over multiple meeting periods. Lone and Burroughs explain that a CPI is 

typically comprised of five stages: prompt, reflect, form questions, discuss, and close (57). The 
members first reflect upon a prompt (a picture, video, short story, philosophical passage, etc.) and 
then create questions about it, which shape the direction of the subsequent discussion. What is key 
here is that participants create the questions; the line of inquiry is not imposed from without. In 
creating questions, young people develop the ability to learn what they don’t know: they are able to 
identify areas of confusion or curiosity elicited by a prompt and develop the ability to respond 
accordingly. These initial steps echo Freire's method, which also relies on the oppressed to generate 
worthwhile questions about problems identified in their own social reality. By generating a critical 
consciousness of reality that starts from the interests of the oppressed, the oppressed develop a praxis 
that can lead to liberatory action (Freire 66). 

 
A CPI typically has four key elements in addition to its five stages, according to Lone and 

Burroughs. First, the members seek to build meaning in a collective fashion (Lone and Burroughs 54-
55). In a CPI, the teacher or club leader acts as a facilitator rather than one who solely delivers 
content. While participants decide the course of dialogue, facilitators play an important role, 
especially in the discussion phase, according to Lone and Burroughs. For the discussion to be a 
philosophical one, the facilitator has to listen carefully, noting the connections and contradictions 
between what the participants say and making those relationships explicit. The facilitator has to point 
out when students are giving reasons for their positions or when someone offers a counter-argument. 
The facilitator also has to recognize if the discussion is progressing (Lone and Burroughs 60). 
Therefore, the facilitator has to have developed what Lone and Burroughs call philosophical 
sensitivity: familiarity with fundamental philosophical questions and debates and ability to see 
philosophical elements and patterns in the students’ discussions (60). They can then allow students to 
drive the discussion, while they help them develop it into a philosophical dialogue. A CPI is not 
primarily about learning a particular body of information, though that is frequently learned along the 
way, but rather about discovery and logical development. 

 
Because of this first requirement, a CPI reinforces a different model of the knower. Unlike 

“view from nowhere” account, a CPI recognizes participants as situated knowers. The understanding 



ANALYTIC TEACHING AND PHILOSOPHICAL PRAXIS VOL. 40, ISSUE 2 (2020) 

  
 

11 
 

produced by a CPI is intricately linked to all participants, their particular experiences, and their 
current setting. The P4C model is intersubjective and situated. The way dialogue is pursued in a CPI 
highlights how each of us comes to know through and alongside one another. Since dialogue is at the 
heart of a CPI, participants come to learn vis-à-vis the learning of others. The nature of dialogue 
requires participants to recognize the fact that they learn about the world and their selves through the 
experiences of other people. By forging understanding with the experiences and perspectives of other 
people alongside a student’s own, participants come to understand the world from an intersubjective 
point of view. 

 
Insofar as a CPI focuses on learning as a collective pursuit, it promotes a sense of community 

and collaboration. A CPI demonstrates to the participants that one person learns less when the others 
fail to learn because the wider discourse is truncated. This occurs because the person who has failed to 
learn is less able to invigorate the discussion with their own perspective on the new knowledge. Each 
member’s learning is contingent on every other member’s. Knowledge becomes less about mastery of a 
subject than about engagement in a shared project. As P4C does not promote a competitive view of 
knowledge, it relies on an egalitarian and a radically democratic orientation to its participants. 
Advocates of P4C do not believe that young people have less access to truth or reason than adults do. 
Adults and children are equal interlocutors and meaning makers in a P4C CPI. All children are also 
equal to one another.5 P4C is also radically democratic insofar as it rejects age limits for reason.6 
While the groups radical democrats discuss are usually the poor, women, Black people, and other 
minority groups, they can definitely be children. In fact, Samuel Chambers examines the anti-
democratic function of age restrictions on voting or holding national office. He explains that while 
U.S. citizens are said to exercise “full democratic rights” at 18, the constitution prohibits them from 
holding national office until they are older. Chambers believes that from the perspective of 
democratic politics, we cannot defend age restrictions (13).  In the same way, P4C challenges the idea 
of age limits for reason or rational discourse.7 

 
A second requirement of a CPI that Lone and Burroughs offer, which corresponds with the 

commitment to radical democracy, is that there is no requirement and in fact an aversion to the use of 
technical terms and jargon in a CPI. This requirement ensures that the CPI remains as open as 
possible to everyone. It is also based on the premise that all people have equal intelligences and can 
engage in philosophical engagement and dialogue. They do not need the language of a specialist to do 
so. 

                                                 
5 Radical democrat Jacques Rancière emphasizes the importance of starting with equality as a presupposition, not arriving 
at it as a destination (16). He explains that we in fact already do this when we communicate. We presume the equality of 
intelligences when we presume that the other can understand what we say. Those engaged in P4C explicitly begin with the 
assumption of the equality of the intelligences of the young people in the community.  
6 Radical democracy challenges exclusionary consensus-based governments. According to Rancière, the true scandal of 
democracy is that the demos —the people— means everyone and anyone (16). No one has a preordained title to rule.  
7
 While according to liberal tenets we could make good arguments for and against age limits, there are no democratic 

grounds for the age limits. There have been historic efforts to curtail political participation of and deny the vote of those 
people considered less intelligent, uneducated, or undisciplined. These have taken the form of literacy tests, which have 
been outlawed, largely because we recognize that even non-literate adults should be able to have a voice in how they are 
governed. Just as non-literate adults should have a voice in policies that will impact them, so too should people under 18, 
even if they are considered by many to be less intelligent, uneducated, or undisciplined. 



ANALYTIC TEACHING AND PHILOSOPHICAL PRAXIS VOL. 40, ISSUE 2 (2020) 

  
 

12 
 

 
The final requirements involve epistemic virtues, those virtues conducive to “knowing well.” 

First, those in the CPI must exercise “epistemological modesty” and recognize that they can make 
mistakes (Lone and Burroughs 56). Lone and Burroughs also hold that a CPI must be an intellectually 
safe environment where ideas are met with acceptance and charity (56), which calls for its members to 
exercise benevolence and open-mindedness. Participants must be willing to adjust their own ideas 
when presented with good reasons to do so. These virtues promote a knower’s capacity to know 
because they cultivate a collaborative, non-competitive view of understanding by encouraging all 
participants to engage in dialogue with care. 

 
Freire also emphasizes the importance of developing epistemic virtues in the problem-posing 

method. First, he emphasizes the importance of epistemological modesty. He asks, “How can I 
dialogue if I always project ignorance onto others and never perceive my own... if I regard myself as a 
case apart from others--mere ‘its’ in whom I cannot recognize other ‘I’s’?” (Freire 90). The explicit call 
for modesty and humility applies to both participants and facilitators as Freire implores dialoguers to 
“learn more than they now know” (90). The problem-posing method also calls members to be 
charitable, recognizing that ideas come from other situated subjects, who are working toward a shared 
goal. The banking model, on the other hand, relies on a “mechanistic view of reality” and thus a 
mechanistic view of consciousness (Freire 130). If members assume the other consciousnesses with 
whom they are engaging are like machines, they are less likely to be charitable and supportive, such 
that epistemic failures are attributed to poor programming or hardware (i.e., education or intelligence) 
rather than seen as an opportunity for fruitful dialogue.  
 
 

Conclusion: Testimonial Justice for Young People 
 
Since dialogue is the fabric of P4C, testimonial injustices are much less likely to occur in P4C 

settings than in traditional educational settings and in the environments they condition, including 
current public spheres. Dialogue can only happen via the sharing of testimony, and P4C puts great 
emphasis on the dialogues that can take place between young people. Insofar as young people learn in 
an environment in which others’ testimony is central to developing understanding, testimonial 
injustices are not systemically sustained under P4C. Unlike traditional educational settings which 
impose self-doubt on students, P4C encourages students to form and answer their own questions 
(without thinking that they are infallible), thus developing the epistemic skills necessary for critically 
engaging with the world. 

 
P4C’s facilitation of discourse among young people and cultivation of epistemic virtues are 

critical for healthy public discourse. On the one hand, by promoting epistemic virtues in young 
people, we help ensure that these young people, when they are adults, exercise the epistemic virtues 
with the young people with whom they interact, leading to less testimonial quieting and better 
dialogue. A future senator who recognizes young people as valuable interlocutors may not silence the 
young Sunrise activists and may instead trust their ability to engage in honest dialogue. More 
importantly, however, if young people today experience less testimonial quieting in their schooling, 
where they spend a great deal of their time, they are less likely to smother themselves. Young people 



ANALYTIC TEACHING AND PHILOSOPHICAL PRAXIS VOL. 40, ISSUE 2 (2020) 

  
 

13 
 

who cultivate epistemic virtues in educational spaces that encourage them to employ their own 
experiences and interests to produce meaningful discourses become more resilient to epistemic 
injustices that pervade the public's treatment of their testimony. They become more confident to 
speak truth to power. P4C, rather than cultivating epistemic self-doubt, promotes and develops 
epistemic confidence as a virtue demanded by discourse in a CPI. Young people, especially 
marginalized young people including young people of color, develop the license to speak their mind 
and gain the ability to demand that those words are heard. Testimonial smothering regarding political 
and public discourse among young people should therefore become much rarer when education 
focuses on dialogue and CPIs. This is critically important for the vitality of discourse because it opens 
the door for meaningful public debate, such as that provided by BLM, the Sunrise Movement, and 
Never Again MSD, to include many more young people. As these groups and others grow in size and 
importance, it will become more difficult for adults with public power to ignore these meaningful 
voices and perspectives. 

 
References 
Abdullah, Thandiwe. “What This Black Lives Matter Teen Activist Thinks Never Again MSD Misses 

About the Gun Debate.” Bustle, 25 March 2018, https://www.bustle.com/p/what-this-black-
lives-matter-teen-activist-thinks-never-again-msd-misses-about-the-gun-debate-8587893. 

“About.” Black Lives Matter at School, 7 August 2018, https://blacklivesmatteratschool.com/about/. 
Adler, Ben. “Conservative Media Smears Trayvon Martin.” The Nation (blog), 27 March 2012, 

https://www.thenation.com/article/conservative-media-smears-trayvon-martin/. 
Alcindor, Yamiche. “Black Lives Matter Coalition Makes Demands as Campaign Heats Up.” The New 

York Times, 1 August 2016, sec. U.S. 
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/02/us/politics/black-lives-matter-campaign.html. 

Alvarez, Lizette. “Florida Sit-In Against ‘Stand Your Ground.’” The New York Times, 11 August 
2013, sec. U.S. 
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/12/us/dream-defenders-arent-walking-out-on-their-
florida-protest.html. 

Astor, Maggie. “Florida Legislator’s Aide Is Fired After He Calls Parkland Students ‘Actors.’” 
The New York Times, 20 February 2018, sec. U.S. 
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/us/florida-shooting-benjamin-kelly-actors.html. 

Bromwich, Jonah Engel. “Parkland Students Find Themselves Targets of Lies and Personal 
Attacks.” The New York Times, 27 March 2018, sec. U.S. 
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/us/parkland-students-hogg-gonzalez.html. 

Burroughs, Michael D., and Deborah Tollefsen. “Learning to Listen: Epistemic Injustice and the 
Child.” Episteme vol. 13, no. 3, 2016, 359–77. 

Chambers, Samuel. The Lessons of Rancière. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013. 
 “Data Snapshot: School Discipline.” Civil Rights Data Collection, U.S. Department of Education 

Office for Civil Rights, March 2014. https://ocrdata.ed.gov/Downloads/CRDC-School-
Discipline-Snapshot.pdf. 

Dotson, Kristie. “A Cautionary Tale: On Limiting Epistemic Oppression.” Frontiers: A Journal of 
Women's Studies vol. 33, no. 1, 2012, 24-47. 
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5250/fronjwomestud.33.1.0024. 
 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/us/florida-shooting-benjamin-kelly-actors.html


ANALYTIC TEACHING AND PHILOSOPHICAL PRAXIS VOL. 40, ISSUE 2 (2020) 

  
 

14 
 

Dotson, Kristie. “Tracking Epistemic Violence, Tracking Practices of Silencing.” Hypatia vol. 
26, no. 2, 2011, 236-57.  https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2011.01177.x. 

Epstein, Rebecca, Jamilia J. Black, and Thalia González. “Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black 
Girls’ Childhood.” Center on Poverty and Inequality: Georgetown Law, 27 June 2017. 
https://www.law.georgetown.edu/poverty-inequality-center/wp-
content/uploads/sites/14/2017/08/girlhood-interrupted.pdf. 

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 30th Anniversary ed., New York, Continuum, 2000. 
Fricker, Miranda. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford, Oxford 

University Press, 2007.  
Goff, Phillip Atiba, Matthew Christian Jackson, Brooke Allison Lewis Di Leone, Carmen Marie 

Culotta, and Natalie Ann DiTomasso. “The Essence of Innocence: Consequences of 
Dehumanizing Black Children.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology vol. 106, no. 4, 2014, 
526–45. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035663. 

Green, Nadege. “In Parkland, Shutting Down A Black Lives Matter Statement Days Before Shooting.” 
WJCT Public Media, 6 April 2018. https://news.wjct.org/post/parkland-shutting-down-black-
lives-matter-statement-days-shooting. 

Hogg, David, and Emma González. “Since Parkland, We’ve Been Demanding Action. Now It’s 
Time to Join Us.” Washington Post, 5 November 018, sec. Perspective. 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/11/05/since-parkland-weve-been-d 
manding-action-now-its-time-join-us/. 

“K-12 Education: Discipline Disparities for Black Students, Boys, and Students with 
Disabilities.” Report to Congressional Requesters. United States Government 
Accountability Office, March 2018. https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-18-258. 

Lind, Dara. “Black Lives Matter vs. Bernie Sanders, Explained.” Vox, 11 August 2015, 
https://www.vox.com/2015/8/11/9127653/bernie-sanders-black-lives-matter. 

Lipman, Matthew. “Philosophy for Children: Some Assumptions and Implications.” Children 
Philosophize Worldwide: Theoretical and Practical Concepts, edited by Eva Marsal, Takara Dobashi, 
and Barbara Weber, Frankfurt am Maim, Peter Lang, 2009, 23–43. 

Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Hackett Publishing, 1996. 
Lone, Jana Mohr, and Michael D. Burroughs. Philosophy in Education: Questioning and Dialogue in 

Schools. Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. 
Lopez, German. "It’s Official: March for Our Lives Was One of the Biggest Youth Protests Since the 

Vietnam War." Vox, 26 March 2018, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2018/3/26/17160646/march-for-our-lives-crowd-size-count. 

@marcorubio. “Claiming some of the students on tv after #Parkland are actors is 
the work of a disgusting group of idiots with no sense of decency.” Twitter, 20 February 
2018, 6:04 p.m., https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/966071116447010821. 

Mezzofiore, Gianluca. “No, Emma Gonzalez Did Not Tear up a Photo of the Constitution.” 
CNN, 26 March 2018. 
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/26/us/emma-gonzalez-photo-doctored-trnd/index.html. 

Murris, Karin. “The Epistemic Challenge of Hearing Child’s Voice.” Studies in Philosophy and 
Education vol. 32, no. 3, 2013, 245–59. 

Nagel, Thomas. The View from Nowhere. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989. 
@Oprah. “George and Amal, I couldn’t agree with you more. I am joining 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/11/05/since-parkland-weve-been-d
https://twitter.com/hashtag/Parkland?src=hash


ANALYTIC TEACHING AND PHILOSOPHICAL PRAXIS VOL. 40, ISSUE 2 (2020) 

  
 

15 
 

forces with you and will match your $500,000 donation to ‘March for Our Lives.’ These 
inspiring young people remind me of the Freedom Riders of the 60s who also said we’ve had 
ENOUGH and our voices will be heard. Twitter, 20 February 20, 2018, 5:36 p.m., 
https://twitter.com/Oprah/status/966079086379507712. 

 “Oprah Winfrey’s Comments about Recent Protests and Ferguson Spark Controversy.” 
People.Com, 1 January 2015. https://people.com/celebrity/oprah-on-recent-protests-and-
ferguson/. 

Pareene, Alex. “Why Rush Limbaugh and the Right Turned on Trayvon Martin.” Salon, 2 April 2012. 
https://www.salon.com/2012/04/02/why_rush_limbaugh_and_the_right_turned_on_trayvo
n_martin/. 

Piaget, Jean. The Child’s Conception of the World. Rowman & Littlefield, 2007. 
Rancière, Jacques. Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy. Translated by Julie Rose. 1st ed., 

University of Minnesota Press, 2004. 
Reynolds, Barbara. “I Was a Civil Rights Activist in the 1960s. But It’s Hard for Me to Get 

behind Black Lives Matter.” Washington Post, 24 August 2015, sec. PostEverything. 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/08/24/i-was-a-civil-rights-act 
vist-in-the-1960s-but-its-hard-for-me-to-get-behind-black-lives-matter/. 

Schmidt, Samantha. “Rep. Steve King’s Campaign Ties Parkland’s Emma González to 
‘Communist’ Cuba.” Washington Post, 26 March 2018, sec. Morning Mix. 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/03/26/rep-steve-kings-
campaign-ties-parklands-emma-gonzalez-to-communist-cuba/. 

Seelinger, Lani. “Parkland Survivors Have Formed A New Group & You Need To Know What They 
Stand For.” Bustle, 19 February 2018, https://www.bustle.com/p/what-is-never-again-msd-
parkland-survivors-are-standing-up-to-politicians-the-nra-8262680. 

@ShawnHarrisonFL. “Tonight Mr. Kelly was terminated from his position as my District 
Secretary. I am appalled at and strongly denounce his comments about the Parkland 
students. I am again sorry for any pain this has caused the grieving families of this tragedy.” 
Twitter, 20 February 2018, 8:09 p.m., 
https://twitter.com/ShawnHarrisonFL/status/966102446425739264 

Staples, Brent. “At School, It Matters If You’re Black or White.” NY Times Taking Note (blog), 
28 March 2014. https://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/at-school-it-matters-if-
youre-black-or-white/. 

Stevens, Matt. “‘Skinhead Lesbian’ Tweet About Parkland Student Ends Maine Republican’s 
Candidacy.” The New York Times, 18 March 2018, 
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/18/us/politics/maine-republican-leslie-gibson.html. 

Sunrise Movement Bay Area. Live Video Inside Senator Dianne Feinstein's San Francisco 
Office. Facebook, 22 February 2019 
https://www.facebook.com/BayAreaSunrise/videos/2101109139978731/. 

“Sunrise Principles.” Sunrise Movement. Accessed 13 June 13 2019, 
https://www.sunrisemovement.org/principles. 

Theoharis, Jeanne. “The Civil Rights Movement, Distorted: Weaponizing History against Black Lives 
Matter.” Salon, 31 January 2018. https://www.salon.com/2018/01/30/the-civil-rights-
movement-distorted-weaponizing-history-against-black-lives-matter/. 

Thunberg, Greta. “‘You Did Not Act in Time’: Greta Thunberg’s Full Speech to MPs.” The 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/08/24/i-was-a-civil-rights-act


ANALYTIC TEACHING AND PHILOSOPHICAL PRAXIS VOL. 40, ISSUE 2 (2020) 

  
 

16 
 

Guardian, 23 April 2019, sec. Environment. 
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/23/greta-thunberg-full-speech-to-mps-
you-did-not-act-in-time. 

Wanshel, Elyse. “Those Images of Emma González Ripping Up the Constitution Are Fake,” 
Huffington Post, 26 March 2018, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/parkland-student-emma-
gonzalez-ripping-up-the-constitution-fake_n_5ab934efe4b054d118e5aeb8. 
 

 
 
Address Correspondences to:  

Sarah Vitale, PhD 
Department of Philosophy 
NQ 211 
Ball State University 
2000 W University Avenue 
Muncie, IN 47306 
sevitale@bsu.edu 

 
Owen Miller 
Ball State University, Class of 2020 
Department of Philosophy 
Ball State University 
2000 W University Avenue 
Muncie, IN 47306 
otmiller@bsu.edu 
 

 
 
 
 

mailto:sevitale@bsu.edu
mailto:sevitale@bsu.edu

