Laura Kipnis's Unwanted Advances is, in important ways, a work of epistemology. It's not an academic monograph—don't file it in the philosophy section. But many of its most central questions are epistemic: given the murky circumstances, psychological complexity, and private details that characterize sexual misconduct allegations in academia, how are investigators or members of the public to know, or to come to reasonable beliefs about, what has happened?
Kipnis’s view is that the prevalent practices among student activists and campus administrators are epistemically faulty: we are, Kipnis thinks, far too quick to believe students' allegations of sexual harassment and assault. On p. 1 of the book she describes the campus status quo as "officially sanctioned hysteria" and a "sexual paranoia" akin to McCarthyism and the Salem witch trials. ("As in Salem," Kipnis quips on pp. 66–7, "the accusations of post-adolescent girls still factor heavily.")
In this post I’d like to express disagreement with some elements of Kipnis’s epistemic outlook. All the usual content warnings.