When knowledge becomes the battlefield I – Feminist scholarship in times of epistemic warfare

Abstract

On 20 January 2025, the newly inaugurated President Trump released an Executive Order (EO) entitled ‘Defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government’ (the White House, 2025). The document points to an alleged ‘ongoing and purposeful attack’ on ‘biological sex’ (understood here as strictly binary and immutable), which is argued to have a ‘corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system.’ It is but one illustrative example of an ongoing moral panic that has taken root in various ideological circles, notably within religiously conservative and far right political parties, movements, and digital communities. In political agitation against so-called ‘gender ideology’, knowledge has become a key battleground, where definitions of sex and gender are claimed by illiberal actors under the guise of ‘science’, ‘biology’, or ‘common sense’. In such agitations against ‘gender’, outdated and unscientific understandings of ‘biological sex’ are used to sow fear and suspicion, while concerns about the safety of women and children are weaponized against the rights and protection of LGBTQ+ minorities. These struggles over the social meaning of sex and gender take place within the broader context of escalating far-right mobilization against epistemic institutions, in which universities and the media are regularly portrayed as the alleged ‘woke’ bulwark of the left (Amery & Mondon, 2024; Bracke, 2024; Paternotte & Kuhar, 2018). In response to these developments, this panel presents theoretical and empirical scholarship focused on gender and knowledge production in times of far-right electoral success and the growing influence of anti-gender campaigns, across a range of different geographical contexts in Europe and beyond. Departing from a broad theoretical focus on the intersection of epistemic contention and ‘anti-gender’ politics (Eslen-Ziya and Giorgi 2022; Paternotte & Verloo, 2021; Verloo, 2018), presentations will address how these broader dynamics impact both the safety, freedom, and wellbeing of scholars, and public discourses about what is considered ‘valid’ and ‘legitimate’ knowledge production in today’s political context. Contributions engage with political attacks on feminist scholarship across different geographical contexts, and through different theoretical and empirical approaches. First, the panel addresses the ways in which political and bureaucratic attacks on feminist research have had a detrimental impact on the independence and freedom of critical scholarship. Second, the panel engages with the urgent issue of escalating threats and harassment directed towards academics, hereby exploring how attacks on scholarship might reflect and perpetuate broader patterns of inequality and the politicization of knowledge. In response to these urgent challenges, contributions in this panel suggest theoretical perspectives to better understand the dynamics at play and propose collective modes of resistance to epistemic attacks on critical scholarship. This is part of a two-panel proposal – see also ‘When knowledge becomes the battlefield II’

Title	Details
Epistemic Warfare and the Dismantling of Gender Research in the United States	View Paper Details
When the far right wins epistemic struggles: Germany’s constitutional court and reproductive rights in the age of far-right normalization	View Paper Details
More frequent, more severe, more personal – An intersectional analysis of political scientists’ experiences of threats and harassment	View Paper Details
(Un)silencing academia: intersectional online violence and academic freedom	View Paper Details
Transformation beyond reform? Abolitionist thinking and institutional responses to harm in political legislatives	View Paper Details