Ilana Redstone

American institutions have increasingly forgotten the distinction. Courts, schools, corporations, and universities treat contested moral and causal claims — about discrimination, fairness, and harm — as already decided, and treat democratic life as the apparatus for enforcing the decision. My work examines how that shift happened, what it has cost, and what it would take to recover.

The Certainty Trap (2024) argued that intellectual humility is a civic skill, not just a personal virtue. Presumption of Guilt, forthcoming, examines how the loss of that skill became institutional rather than individual.

I'm a professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I write, speak, and occasionally consult on questions at the intersection of social science, law, and democratic theory.