Leiter goes on to remind readers that foundational scholars in modern philosophy were anti-Semites and even Nazis. What’s an academic to do?

His answer is simple:

Insofar as you aim to contribute to scholarship in your discipline, cite work that is relevant regardless of the author’s misdeeds. Otherwise you are not doing scholarship but something else … Scholarly citation has only two purposes in a discipline:

• To acknowledge a prior contribution to knowledge on which your work depends.
• To serve as an epistemic authority for a claim relevant to your own contribution to knowledge. (By epistemic authority I mean simply another scholar’s research that is invoked to establish the reliability or truth of some other claim on which your work depends.)

In each case, citation has its purpose — ensuring the integrity of the scholarly discipline in question. Failure to cite because of a scholar’s misconduct — whether for being a Nazi or a sexual harasser — betrays the entire scholarly enterprise that justifies the existence of universities and the protection of academic freedom... You should not — under any circumstances — adjust your citation practices to punish scholars for bad behavior… researchers or teachers who let moral indignation interfere with scholarly judgment do betray the core purposes of the university and so open themselves to professional repercussions.

In other words, he argues that truth is the scholar’s telos, not social justice.

Read more at The Atlantic