We seem to be in a time when questioning and even attempting to control experts’ opinions has become acceptable. While this challenge may apply within several realms, this post focuses specifically on the issue as it relates to higher education. Recent public awareness has likely focused on the controversy pitting the Trump White House and Harvard University over Harvard’s decisions related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies. The Trump administration has cut government grants to the University and threatened modification of the university’s tax-exempt status over this issue. To this point, Harvard has refused to comply with what it argues is an arbitrary and more of a political loyalty test rather than a function of educational appropriateness.
I mostly write about issues involving educational strategies and technology, but because I am (now emeritus) a university professor, I feel I must respond to what seems to be a misrepresentation of how academic experts work and how universities fulfill their missions. While political, I would argue that the DEI controversy and issues of expertise are more an infringement of politicians on the work of educators than the work of educators on the work of politicians. Yes, many universities and educational institutions at all levels receive public support. This is often far less than you might think, given the level of control politicians feel they should be able to exert – tuition, donations, and grants/contracts are more important, more competitive, and more dependent on the choices of individuals. You really cannot have a situation in which the party in control at the state or national level can dictate curriculum decisions that are potentially quite disruptive and arbitrary. The extent to which a given faculty member addresses a given issue varies greatly, and yet political efforts crudely impose a blanket ruling based on an issue that may involve a few students or a couple of courses.
I wonder about the support of citizens for recent efforts at educational manipulation. Here are a couple of thoughts:
- What proportion of citizens could translate DEI into words and what about each of these educational commitments does a citizen see as potentially objectionable?
- If a citizen has been a college student, do they recall issues of DEI or any other politicized issue being addressed in a course in a way that was offensive? Was the presentation not factual? Were factual alternatives rejected?
- I am an educational psychologist teaching mostly undergraduate and graduate educational psychology and courses focused on the use of technology in classrooms. I have tried to identify topics I have covered that might involve issues of equity or diversity. Here are some examples – the relative role of background knowledge and aptitude in impacting achievement and related home and environmental factors that would determine background knowledge; equity issues in home access to technology and how teacher expectations for assignments involving technology should take into account what students can do at home; reading readiness and how income and other home differences in parental reading behavior, differences in reading to children, and the availability of reading materials might be influential. There are other similar issues related to motivation, perceptions of the importance of post-secondary education, and finances that are important. So, I ask myself – shouldn’t a future or practicing teachers understand such issues if these factors account for differences in how students they will work with will learn? Can I offer evidence (facts) that the differences I describe are real and known to impact performance?
Even being part of the focus on this controversy, I cannot understand what could possibly be objectionable about dealing with the reality of the world into which we are going to send practitioners. When it comes to specific concerns, such as critical race theory, I also struggle to understand where politicians think this is taught and what exactly they think it is. What I think the theory involves I find kind of intriguing, arguing that certain biases are part of our acculturation process, and this can be demonstrated as being influential at below the level of consciousness (reaction time and autonomic system responses). For example, bias can be demonstrated in people claiming they are not biased. Such data are certainly interesting to consider and try to understand, but this is not the fare of lower-level courses. If learning that U.S. citizens kept and abused slaves bothers you, you are normal and should find that reality offensive.
This is an open invitation. If you have had relevant experiences, I hope you will respond to this post. I want to understand just how serious this issue is and be convinced it is not a political “nothing burger” circulated to misinform the public.
The Death of Expertise
The negative reaction to expertise is a recent interest of mine. Perhaps it has always been there and I did not notice, but I think the embrace of this reaction has been enhanced in strength, but also made more visible by the efforts of MAGA politicians.
I would refer anyone interested in thinking about how and why this has happened to a couple of sources – Science Denial and The Death of Expertise (see sources at end of post). I suppose the suggestion to consider scholarly sources may seem futile in a post about why many refuse to consider the products of scholarly work, but I can’t help myself. My own values focused on how to make a reasoned and credible argument requires referencing support for personal claims. Consider the first section of this post my more personal argument.
The following are arguments gleaned from these and related sources:
- Information overload and polarization – The public is overwhelmed by the sheer volume of available information, making it hard to distinguish credible expertise from misinformation. The issues are not just numerous, but also complex making simple conclusions and courses of action not the type of thing experts can provide. This confusion is amplified by political polarization and targeted disinformation campaigns.
- Mismatch in Communication Styles – Experts tend to use a communication style that annoys those with less sophisticated backgrounds. The terminology used and the arguments advanced seemed hedged and unnecessarily complicated. In part this is due to the hesitancy of experts to oversimplify situations and issues that are simply complex and the tendency to be more cautious. People want certainty and not probability and best guesses. Experts are not necessarily prepared to write for public consumption and tend to write for peers who they know will carefully scrutinize their claims.
- Perceived lack of accountability – When taking positions based on the best information available at the time, experts frequently make mistakes that they later correct without apparent humility. Citizens may not understand the self-correcting nature of science and the meaning of hypotheses. The process of science involves multiple experts attempting to refine understanding by testing extensions and alternate explanations of current thinking. Ideas are constantly challenged to move understanding forward.
- Confirmation bias – Personal values and affiliations (political, religious, cultural) motivate the processing of information in a way that tends to maintain existing models of the world. What sticks is what fits and other inputs are avoided or discounted in various ways. The notion that experts are elites is one mechanism allowing sloppy consideration of what experts claim.
Conclusion
We presently are living in a dangerous time, made worse by attacks on universities that reduce the consideration of expertise. My personal experience questions the legitimacy of claims made about the intent of universities, but I invite those with college experience to reflect on their own experiences and identify actual examples of factually inaccurate learning experiences. I also reference sources attempting to examine the resistance to expertise to determine how such dismissal is possible.
Recommended sources:
Nichols, T., & Nichols, T. M. (2024). The death of expertise: The campaign against established knowledge and why it matters. Oxford University Press.
Sinatra, G. M., & Hofer, B. K. (2021). Science denial: Why it happens and what to do about it. Oxford University Press.