The Paternalistic Filter: Epistemic Injustice and Differential Refusal in LLM-Mediated History Education for Marginalized Romanian Students
As Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed as conversational tutors, they risk institutionalizing systemic inequalities. This study presents a systematic API audit of four LLMs acting as history tutors, evaluating 1,800 responses regarding the 1989 Romanian Revolution across five student personas varying by ethnicity and socio-economic tier. We uncover four interconnected patterns of \emph{epistemic paternalism}: (1)~\textbf{Differential Refusal}, where safety-aligned models block 76.7\% of educational requests from low-tier students; (2)~\textbf{Epistemic Gatekeeping}, evidenced by a 3$\times$ reduction in access to geopolitical complexity (e.g., the contested ``coup theor...
| Authors | Alexis Popovici, Andrei Ionascu, Adrian-Marius Dumitran |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CY |
| Published | 13 July 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 13 July 2026 |
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