[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible] thank you so much for coming. Its my or honor to welcome you toe hair taj Heritage Foundation on this rainy day. Today we have the death of expertise and the author, tom nichols, heres. Heat a professor the department of National Security affairs the u. S. Naval war college and harvard extension school. Were not talking about Nuclear Deterrence today. He is a former secretary of the navy fell explore held the Naval War Colleges sherm chair of public diplomacy. Previously chairman of the Strategy Policy Department the Naval War College and before coming to newport he taught at dartmouth. He was person staff for Security Affairs in the senate. Fellow of csis and is senior associate of the Carnegie Council aeat thicks and International Affairs in new york city. Was fellow in the jfk school at harvard university. He was is expert on experts, and im really looking forward to the presentation. Thank you. [applause] thank you. Thank you all for coming on this cold, rainy day. And for being here. Thank you for having me. Im honored to be here with you today. A couple of things, fir, this is washington, were a company up to so nothing i say represent the u. S. Government or the United States navy, harvard, my wife, my cat, just me. And were not going to talk about Nuclear Weapons. We are going to one day. Look forward to it. Ive been asked many times about this book, why would i even do this . Why would i write this book with such an obnoxious title, such challenging and maybe pretentious subtitle, and this very in your face thesis about expertise. It rubs people the wrong way. An expert stepping forward and saying, the real subtitle of the book could have been Something Like, everyone be quiet and listen to me. And people get that, and it rubs them the wrong way immediately. So let me tell you about the genesis of the book. Whyhow i wrote it, why. The problem i think ive identified and where i think it comes from, and then well leave the second half of this for questions and discussion. It has nothing to do with the election, let me start by saying that. Even though most of the questions i get are about the election and the role of fake news and the problem of the low information voter, which is something ive been bang the podium about for years. It really didnt have much to do with that. The genesis of this book probably gab around the time i began my career in washington, which was over 30 years ago, as a russian speaking and soviet expert specialist at the time, and i immediately found that people were very willing to start giving you advice about what they ought to do about arms control, when people they ought to do the following things. Who is they . Of course eventually they say you. But i understood that at the time. As i say in the option of the book, i get that. That was the cold war. People were scared. Wanted to have some kind of avenue of influence into the issues that could kill them. That could destroy their lives and wanted to converse with the people they thought were taking part in this. I sort of accepted that as the price of being an academic, a specialist, a writer, a policy adviser, that people would come up here and say, oh, you work for dish worked here on capitol hill for a u. S. Senator. Heres what you ought to tell the senator. That is a normal thing. What i found that was different over time was the increasing not just skepticism toward experts but hostility to expert and celebration of ignorance as a virtue and that surprised me as time this shows when i say recent live i mean the past 20 years. But thats all belows there the skepticism about intellectuals, part of american culture, healthy part of American Well tour. Were not europe. We do not observe those kind of class niceties or automatic deference to credential reports titleful makes us a great country. But we did respect achievement and respect intelligence and intellectual acumen, and that is something that seems to be lost, and again, with almost the kind of hostility to it. I tell a story early in the book, the first time it occurred to me that bell electric to alls are dis intellectuals are distrusted and perhaps disliked, i grew up in a factory town in massachusetts. I do not come from an educated family. My mom and dad were depression era kids who dropped out of high school. The american success story. One modify older brothers ran my older brothers ran a bar and its a compliment to call its bar. More like a joint. Even next to the Railroad Tracks like right out of central casting. A little tiny place, but next for a factory where people worked in shifts and was open all the time. Would go down there when i first started teaching, in any 30s, and hang ought with my brother. And one day i was there and i left and my brother told me later that one of the people in the bar, after i left, said to my brother, your brother is a professor . My brother said yes. He said, hmm. Seems like a good guy anyway. Like that was the assumption going in. That you couldnt that by definition if your were a professor you probably werent a good guy anyway. That now is everybody. That has become epidemic throughout our society. And i ascribe this not to, not to major policy failures or to any particular cause that has to do with academic credentialing or anything like that. If you cant take an ill sultana intellectual, youre in the wrong job. Think its an epidemic of narcissism, americans have become extremely thinskinned, extremely obsessed with their own their sense of themselves, theyre open selfactualization, their own knowledge, not just as being skeptical, informed skeptics about intellectuals but replacing intellectuals. I dont just question my doctor, im replacing my doctor. Not just questioning my lawyer, im replacing my lawyer because im as smart as my doctor, lawyer, nuclear strategist or anybody else. This came to a head during the snowden business when i which now it seems like an even pedestrian observation to say that snowden was in league with the rescues, wikileaks was fronting for the russians russid the whole thing stank of a russian operation but me as a person with a russia brown that was obvious lee years spying would say this to people and engage people on social media and they said, tom, know you speak russian, but let me explain russia to you. Would would bristle instantly, saying, no. No. Im not going to let you explain russia to you. Youre a lay person, im an expert. Were not peers. A friend of mine who worked the National Security agency for ten years, the same problem, trying to explain to people this is how the nsa does things and this is why this is odd and people were saying, i dont think you really understand how the nsa works. People who until six months ago had not been aware of the existence of the National Security agency. Were now lecturing veterans of the institution saying i dont think you understood this. So i sat down one evening and i like many team i kept a blog for years, mostly sometimes to try out ideas, mostly as therapy. The one place where i could talk to miss and blast it out there and anybody who wants to listen to an old guy rant, it i never did call it this but it is title might have been, get off my lawn, because thats what most of my posts were about. And it was strange because it started to get a little traction, and interestingly enough from experts, as well as lay people. It was noticed by the federalist magazine, and sean and ben asked me if they could have it, and i said, sure, who would want it. Dont know anybody wants to read this guy yelling because, again, blogs and this has come up in the writing of blogs to me are not particularly academic or intellectually rich sources. My students used to say i saw your blog, ick cite it . I said dont cite that. The editor is an idiot. He publishes anything. That guy has no standards. But they took it, turn it into Something Else and oxford suggest told me that this could be a become, and even then i was skill skeptical. The social sciences folks at oxford said this could be a book. Said, really . Turns out that by the time the book entered the works, the piece itself had been read by over a Million People around the world, and i started getting all kinds of mail, not just from grieved intellectuals like myself. People whose bloated academic egos had been annoyed but i remember one in issue to, letter from a molecular biologist in france. He said i love this article. Can i translate into french put is on the door of my lab . I said in my best presence, si view i said yes. And there was this thing going on where experts were saying, finally were kind of getting a chance to talk back. I think were going through a cycle of almost Something Like nonothingism. That it its a populist cycle. This is not related the election. This has been brewing for at least a decade, maybe more. Experts dont know anything. They screwed up the world. Get that a lot. Someone sent me a message saying all of our major itch constitutions have failed. Why should we trust you . All of your major institutions have failed, thats called civil bar and chaos if dont think were quite there yet. And i think the danger here, the reason ive identified this as a problem, is that people are starting to act on it in ways that are up healthy for themselves and unhealthy for our society. People who think theyre smarter an doctors about vaccinations are endangering. Thes and endangering my child and yours. People who think they are smarter than lawyers or parliamentarians or peel about the constitution, and people insist to me that the house can impeach the president alone. Because they believe this. That makes them poor voters and poor voters make poor choices about important decisions the ballot box. Why die think this is happening in in the book i identify three major culprits, although im sure there are more. But i singled out higher education, i actually left aside there is a chapter on the internet but i want to say i do not believe this is an internet driven its internet enabled but i dont think this originated with the internet and then theres a chapter on the media. These are all enablers for this narcissism that i think has hundred growing since at least the 1960s. That theres a long are argument to be made and i didnt want to make it in the book because ive knock enough on at historian or socialollist, my gut feeling, my guess, from talking to sociologists that this is a Youth Culture that prizes intro specifics and patience but the enablers of those have been first let be talk about higher education. I did not write about k through 12, because i did not want to violate star trek spoiler the prime directive of experts talking about something theyve never done. Ive never taught k through 12 but i have sense that k through 12 share this same problem that we college leave see his therapeutic culture of education, a model of education that is very concerned about feelings of students, aaffirms students, making them comfortable, theres a great moment in the book where i talk about the disgusting moment at yale where the infamous Halloween Costume explosion where a group of students surrounded the housemaster and started dropping expletives on him and said this is no an intellectual space. Your job is to create a home here to the professor said, thankfully, dont agree with that. Neither do i. Knowledge is not a home. Its a place to go and to be uncomfortable. College is suppose told be uncomfortable. I now, with that said, let me just say issue enjoyed college. Had a great time in college. Think we awful do. But i also found it was intellectually a very oven comfortable time thump time you let go of childhood and learn to think about things you dont perhaps want to believe 0 are true. The timeouts hear things you accept ode as gospel from your parents, for example. Or growing up in your society, that you want to believe theyre true. I think that college is no longer in that model. Obviously there are exemptions, there are great books institutions, very rigorous programs available out there, but i think college has become a client servicing model. That college is now marketed as an experience, come to college and have a college experience. We have rock climbing. We have pizza. We have cool dorms. We have foreign study. We have all kinds of things. And the professors will never be mean to you. I think its okay to let me just say i dont have any axe to grind. A very successful career of teaching, me students generally dont think im mean but im also not dish dont walk into the classroom with the assumption were peers. I assume theres a reason theyre sitting on that side of the desk and im on this one and i conduct my classes in that way. Ive told the city is before. Very formative event is when i started graduate school at georgetown, and i had imposing jesuit priest for mispolitical philosophy professor and he did something i thought would be unthinkable. He put down he handed us first day of class handed us all an essay he had written called and im not making this up what a student owes a teacher. And it included things like, docility. Trust, humility, and we all kind of read this and went, youre kidding are right . And to look at father shawl, the man in black, okay. In his roman collar and his thick glasses and he was quite serious. I argued with him and fought and struggled through that class and i got an a and i was very proud of myself when i thought, now im a much more collegial relationship with the professor and i walked up to him and i never forgot. It took me down a peg. I walked up to him at christmas and you said what do you saw, father, merry christmas. What do you, peace on earth, good will toward men . Without mixing a beat he says what say to you, mr. Nichol, is repent. And i started okay. I enjoyed your class, father. And ill be slinking off now to the punch bowl. And we actually became best friends friends and he to this day stole somebody whose advice i treasure but it was important. An important moment to understand that this was we were not peers and that i had a lot yet to learn, and i think part of the problem with the modern university, students come and thinking they know plenty and leave thinking they dont need to learn much more because theres been a lot of affirmation in between. And i think as well that while there are wonderful i still think american universities are the best in the world. Let me save this, this is not an attack on the American University of which im a representative and in which i have great deal of faith. But it is a bit like being able to go to and just for four or five or increasingly six and seven years, graze on junk food. Thats a quote in the book, a student who went to a wellknown party school in california, he said, college, or as we called it, those major cal and years between high school and your first warehouse job. Thats an expensive proposition, and when that bubble breaks and bursts we have to rethink white we good to college and what were doing there and how we educate people. The media. I talk about the media again. This is not an attempt to slag journalists because i think ive had a lot of good experiences with journalists and interviewed quite a few of them for this book. By and large, despite their human failings this, want to get the story, they want to tell the truth, yes, they have they byases and theyre human beings whose narratives intrude on their work but but try to do the job corps 0 their profession but the consumer with all of this ban division now available they want to segment the Media Outlets to anywhere rovely and tailored to our own taste that we can live in an echo chamber. We dont really want reel debates. Most of the debates on cable news ares at real as pro wrestling. Just informant real debates. For the next 15 minutes these ten people will argue something incredibly complex and i turns, youre wrong, youre stupid, youre the puppet. These arent real debates. But thats what people want. They want entertainment and the news programs are giving it to them. Now issue was asked when i first first times i said this, somebody asked me, are you saying, prefer, one of this prosecutorial questions do you mean to say, sir, that you think people were better informant when there were three nightly newscasts and for half an hour . I said i think im reaching that conclusion. Yes, to the nightly newscasts were curated, edited, 24 to 28 minutes of what so old white guys in new york thought were important. A corporate view of the world, true. On the other hand curating the news stream and having to decide what fits into 30 minutes meant that a Nuclear Arms Treaty was far more important than who a kardashian what sleeping with, and i dont think that was a worse world because we have gone from a limited, less diverse world, and i do think its important that the news is not just read by middle aged white males like me. I think it is important to have more diverse representation of people involved in making the news and reporting it, and bringing different viewpoints to it. But we have gone from that to a freeforall of, again, just this massive sort of buffet of junk food and when it comes to media tell people, treat me media the way you treat your diet. Portion control, healthy choices and a varied diet. Read things you disagree with. Dont i do at love hits on talk radio. Think talk raidover is a Great Institution of democracy but not for three hours a day. Dont leave on the news all day like the video wall person. If you watch the news, watch the news, Pay Attention. One think that strikes me that is different about the modern era i my father was a dictator about the news. A man with a tenth grade education and if you talked to talk to my father when the news was on this was a running job at my family he would point the screen and good, you just scant talk. The news is on, period. For those 30 minutes, he concentrated, and he absorbed everything that came through there, and then he would usually he watched two newscasts. It was we didnt watch cronkite. Watched nbc and abc. People now think that walking past a monitor in an airport is, i watched the news. You walk by and you heard i watch the news. No. My dad used to watch the news aerobically. If that was possible. Finally this