CFP: Information Ethics Roundtable 2015

Theme: Secrecy and Transparency

The Information Ethics Roundtable is a yearly conference that brings together information scientists, librarians, philosophers, and social scientists to discuss ethical issues such as intellectual property, intellectual freedom, and censorship. This year the conference will focus on questions of transparency and secrecy.

Keynote speakers will be:

Louise Amoore, Professor of Geography, Durham University (UK), author of The Politics of Possibility: Risk and Security Beyond Probability (Duke University Press, 2013).

Christopher Kutz, C. William Maxeiner Distinguished Professor of Law; Director, Kadish Center for Morality, Law and Public Affairs, University of California, Berkeley.

Transparency is important in a variety of ways, and disputes about transparency and secrecy permeate much of our public discourse. This year’s meeting of the IER seeks papers from a variety of perspectives and disciplines addressing questions about transparency and secrecy, for example:

• What is transparency? What does it mean for something to be kept secret or made transparent?
• What justifies transparency in different domains?
• When is transparency bad, or unjustifiable? When is secrecy good, or justifiable?
• Lots of organizations seek to make government and corporate actions transparent (e.g., fact-checking organizations, open records advocacy organizations, market watchdog groups). Do they succeed? What criteria should we use to determine whether they succeed? Do they introduce other questions of information flow?
• What policies in scientific research and publishing, in journalism, in government, and in commerce best promote transparency?
• Is secret law really law?
• Is it possible to maintain and build trust within a climate of secrecy?

The goal of the 2015 Roundtable is to bring together scholars and professionals to examine these and related issues pertaining to transparency and secrecy, broadly construed. Hence, we welcome submissions on these and any related topics, and we encourage submissions from a broad range of disciplines.

Please submit an abstract of about 500 words to [email protected] by January 5, 2015. Abstracts will be peer reviewed, and notification of acceptance status will be sent by January 20, 2015.  Paper drafts for commentators will be due by March 10, 2015.  More information is available at http://ier2015.org.  For specific questions and inquiries, please contact organizer Alan Rubel at [email protected].