Purple and white logo for LILICON 2026, featuring a stylized lily and text indicating a meeting of the Lilienfeld Alliance for the teaching of rational skepticism in higher education.

LiliCon 2026 is the third annual meeting of the Lilienfeld Alliance. It is an interdisciplinary gathering of those who teach critical thinking in higher education. Community partners in this work with an interest in this topic are invited to join. We are especially interested in refutation as a teaching strategy. By “refutation” we mean the practice of investigating common sense, pseudoscience, scams, conspiracy theories (and more) to explore how critical thinking can be used to identify false claims. This is an opportunity to explore the pedagogy of critical thinking, to discuss how we teach, what false beliefs we tackle and why, and what strategies we use to assess the effectiveness of our teaching.

Photo of Stuart Vyse, a man with white hair, glasses, wearing a dark blazer and light blue shirt, smiling at the camera.
Photo of Kevin Folta, a man with light skin, short brown hair, blue eyes, and a beard, wearing a black suit, white shirt, and a red patterned tie, smiling at the camera.
Photo of Elizabeth Loftus, a woman with shoulder-length red hair, glasses, and gold earrings, smiling in front of a bookshelf filled with books.
Photo of David Dunning, a man with gray hair and a serious expression, wearing a light blue plaid button-up shirt, standing indoors with a blurred background.
Photo of Jeff Schlegelmilch, a smiling man with short, curly gray hair wearing a light blue shirt and dark velvet blazer, standing outdoors.

May 26-28, 2026

California State University, Fresno

Featured Presentations

Opening Plenary (Tues 5/26, 2-3pm)

Stuart Vyse (Behavioral Scientist, Independent Scholar)

Changing Beliefs by Not Changing Them

Morning Plenary (Wed 5/27)

Kevin Folta (Agriculture, University of Florida)

Disinformation Down on the Farm, Imperiling Sustainable Food and Farming

An “Inside the Actor’s Studio” Interview (Wed 5/27) by Zoom

Elizabeth Loftus (Psychology, Criminology, Law; University of California Irvine)

Lessons From the Memory Wars for Teaching Rational Skepticism

Afternoon Plenary (Wed 5/27)

David Dunning (Psychology, University of Michigan)

The Tricky Art of Knowing When You Really Don’t Know

Morning Plenary (Thurs 5/28)

Jeff Schlegelmilch (Climate Science, Columbia University)

Oracles, Activism and Mis-Aligned Incentives - The Perils and Promise of Academia In the Face of Extreme Events

Submit a Proposal

The conference will include a poster session, as well as presentations that are either: 

1) Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (empirical research related to the teaching of critical thinking, must include results) 

2) Teaching Demonstration (description of a course or a learning activity) 


Presentations may be brief reports (15 minutes), full papers (30 minutes) or extended teaching demonstrations (60 minutes). 

 

Proposals due by March 15, 2026. 

https://forms.gle/tqcAvU8DJKqw6SPp9

Conference Registration 

Cost of Registration

$200 early bird (thru 2/26/2026) 

$250 standard registration 

$100 student registration (current college or grad school)  


Registration includes:

Coffee / tea / water during meetings 

Reception and formal dinner on Tuesday 5/26 

Lunch and casual pizza dinner on Wednesday 5/27 

Lunch on Thursday 5/28 


Guests: 

$60 Guest Pass for the formal dinner on Tues 5/26 and the pizza party on Wed 5/27. 


~ Register Now: https://lilienfeldalliance.ticketbud.com/lilicon-2026  ~

Accommodations

Hyatt House at Campus Point

Please use this link to get the LiliCon 2026 group rate.

Group Code: G-LCON

(This hotel is in the same complex as the conference meeting space.)