http://dx.doi.org/10.17176/20220823-181803-0 https://verfassungsblog.de/from-intellectual-poker-to-open-debate/ From Intellectual Poker to Open Debate - A More Fundamental Issue With Scholactivism Mayer, Benoit eng 2022-08-23 electronic resource text/html ddc:342 Activism Scholarship Verfassungsblog Verfassungsblog--2366-7044 CC BY-SA 4.0 Tarunabh Khaitan’s editorial in the International Journal of Constitutional Law presents insightful remarks about the risk that scholactivism may fail both as scholarship and as activism. I largely share Khaitan’s discomfort with scholactivism, which confuses two different goals: advancing human knowledge and advancing a political goal. However, I wonder whether the instrumentalist argument that Khaitan develops is really the decisive one. In this blog, I present some doubts about this instrumentalist argument before suggesting another line of argument, based on the intrinsic nature of academic research.