Program transcript:
Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations. I'm Grant Reeher. As expertise and the exhortation to ‘follow the science’ become politically weaponized, my guest today is Dennis Patterson. He's a Law Professor at Rutgers University and he's also a Law and Legal Philosophy Professor at Surrey Law School in Britain. Together with Rutgers Law School Professor Jacob Hale Russell, he's written a new book. It's titled, "The Weaponization of Expertise: How Elites Fuel Populism". Professor Patterson, welcome to the program and congratulations on the new book.
Dennis Patterson: Well, thank you so much for having me, I appreciate your time.
GR: Well, we appreciate you making the time. So let me just start with a little introduction for you and our listeners about why this book caught my eye, a couple of reasons. First of all, it taps into a set of concerns I've had about elites in the academy in recent years and also, as it happens, I've just finished teaching a course on democratic theory, that's democratic with a small ‘d’. And one of the issues that we discussed was the role of expertise, just how far it can and should take a society in making political decisions and what kinds of decisions we ought to be willing to cede to these subject area experts versus weighing the value trade-offs for ourselves. So I'm very, very keen on what you have to say here. We'll get into the details of your book as we work our way through the issue but I want to briefly, just to start out, just ask you a very basic question. What prompted you and your colleague to write this book when you did?
DP: Well, Jacob and I have had written and had written four articles during the pandemic. We started off shortly after the first wave of COVID with an article in an online publication called Stat News. And the thesis of that article was stop blaming the ordinary American for failing to follow the rules, because, and take the virus seriously, because, in fact, they are and they are doing what they're told. And so if there are problems, the problems lie elsewhere. We then went on to write a couple of more articles. The one that got the most attention was a piece called, “The Mask Debacle”, and that was about three years ago. And our basic thesis there was that the pandemic had, the management of the pandemic had evolved into basically political theater. And the whole idea that anyone was, quote, “following the science” or any science struck us as implausible. Because if you looked at blue states and red states, the regulations that they had were largely political, not driven by any kind of scientific metric. You see, our fundamental focus is not on who got things right or wrong in the pandemic, everybody makes mistakes, it's the way we talk about this. And our thesis has always been that the elites, the technocratic elites who manage the economy and culture, are basically engendering the populism that they claim to decry. And I would go so far as to point to the reelection of Donald Trump as an example of that. Neither one of us is a Trump supporter by any means, but, you know, it's just, you cannot denigrate people day in and day out, tell them their opinion is worthless, that their values and aspirations don't count for anything, and then expect them to just fall into line. That's not going to happen, it didn't happen. And unless things change, it'll just keep occurring. Anyway, that's how we got into it.
GR: Yeah, certainly not a good way to appeal to voters. So we'll work our way through some of these and I particularly want to investigate, probably in the later half of our conversation, about how what actually fuels the populism. But let me break it down first in terms of what's going on with this notion of expertise and experts. You write about an age of what, very provocative phrase, an age of mindless expertise, just say a little bit about that.
DP: Oh, well, we have a passage in the book where we recount the number of times the word expertise appears in the pages of the New York Times. And until about five years ago, it was just like every other word, and then it just explodes. And now we have experts for, you know, everything from drugs to picking a spouse to buying a car, what books to read to your children. I mean, it's just, we really do valorize expertise and we're in some ways that are obvious and important, like science and health and ways that are, you know, absurd, like the best birthday cake for a two year old and things like that.
GR: (laughter) I missed that one. So do you think that when it comes to that phenomenon, proliferation of notion of expertise, that we're living in an age that's different from the past? When I was thinking of the time about 120 years ago or so where there was a real revolution in this notion of professionalism, everything became more professionalized and self-styled professionalism. Do you think something's going on that's unique to our age right now?
DP: I do, I do. And I think it's basically this, but it's also very cultural and it's not across the board. I think that people like us who are, you know, credentialed, educated, tend to believe that the only thing that really matters in any discussion of policy for example, our facts. And if we just get the facts right, everything else will just sort of take care of itself. And one of the messages of our book is, is that, this just ain't so. You can you can have lots of facts but the question remains what to do with them. But we have, I mean if you look at just, you know, popular culture, like, I don't know, Malcolm Gladwell and then somebody more sophisticated like Dan Kahneman, there's all this emphasis on the cognitive and understanding the world and it's basically empirical. And we love to, and Americans love a clean, neat scientific solution to everything, it's cultural. And of course, science is absolutely fantastic at providing solutions. But one of the things that the pandemic did was it really raised the question just how far can we go in making decisions about how to live with just facts? And the answer was, not too far. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say the general public's trust in the public health complex is at an all-time low. Now, if that's true, and I see this all the time, that's the claim, the question is why? What happened during the pandemic to make things that bad?
GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm speaking with Law and Legal Philosophy Professor Dennis Patterson, and we're discussing his new book. It's titled, "The Weaponization of Expertise: How Elites Fuel Populism". I want to pick up on exactly that last point that you made there, because, and I suppose that you and I, as you just said, you know, we're credentialed, we might qualify as elites in our society this way. There's this sense I think that the elites, by and large in our society tend to think, and maybe I'm going too much by what I'm hearing from my colleagues, but tend to think that we are living in an age where expertise and factual knowledge are just being discounted and dismissed out of hand.
DP: Yeah.
GR: And it also seems to be the case that for these elites, that that discounting is also linked to democratic backsliding in their minds. That there's almost a causal relationship there. So it sounds like you would agree with that premise that the expertise and factual knowledge are being discounted and dismissed, is that correct?
DP: No, I don't think it's correct at all.
GR: Oh, okay, explain that then.
DP: So one of the themes of the constellation of issues that you mention is that we allegedly live in a post-truth environment where, you know, everybody has alternate facts. You believe, you have your truths and I have mine and so the idea of an objective reality around which we can coalesce is an illusion. Now, there's plenty of social, this topic is a bit controversial, but there's a lot of social science data to support the proposition that we don't live in a post-truth environment. And in fact, for example, the internet is constantly blamed as, internet and social media are blamed as the means by which people acquire beliefs that are false. And then they lead to, you know, the undermining of democracy et cetera, et cetera. In fact, a lot of empirical evidence points to the proposition that social media does nothing worse than reinforce what people already believe. And so if they are getting misinformation, it's coming from another place. And I also want to point out, as Marty Makary made this point during his confirmation hearing, the government was the primary source of misinformation during the pandemic. The need to close schools, social distancing, closing down the economy, masks. All of the non-pharmacological intervention that the government pushed were ineffective. This is a fact. And yet everybody was told you had to wear a mask, your kids had to stay home, it was it was just all wrong. So, so much for expertise, facts and the truth. Now, are there vaccine deniers? Of course, of course. There are flat earth people, and there are all kinds of people who believe things that are just obviously false. But it's not the vast majority of people out in the public domain. Most people believe things that are, by and large, true. They try to follow the rules as best they can, but they also question, sometimes rightly, the dictates and the mandates of government. And I think that's going to happen more and more. Now, the way the pandemic was managed, the way it was talked about, the derision that was delivered to people who deigned to question what the government was doing, this has all backfired now. And so you want to know why we have more populism? This is in part the answer, because, you know, one of the ways I characterize our book is and I'll speak just for myself here, we're basically diagnosing a pathology, a one that you and I are very familiar with from the faculty lounge. And that is, you know, condescension, right? If you don't have the credentials that we have, you're not worth talking to, right? Second, technocratic paternalism. The idea that facts determine everything. And if you would just shut up and follow what we tell you to do, you'd be fine. And finally, intellectual tyranny, that any dissent is going to be suppressed. I mean, look at the attack on the Great Barrington people, Fauci and Collins trying to tank them, you know, with articles and such. The Biden administration’s suppression of people on Twitter and Facebook. I mean, this stuff just can't go on. And again, it turns out these people were by and large, correct. They certainly weren't wrong, right? I mean, the Great Barrington people, they were on to something, focused protection was just as plausible. And of course, my favorite example, right, where did the virus come from, a wet market or a lab, right? Remember when Trump suggested it came from a lab? Everybody said he was a racist. I never understood why it was racist, like, why a wet market is less racist in a lab, but okay. But that aside, right? And now it is at least plausible, if not more, that the virus came from a lab. In fact, it might have been a lab, you know, that received funding from the United States government. So maybe, you know, we don't know the facts about that yet. But the point is, is that we can't even talk about a thesis like that without it being completely politically polarized.
GR: You’re listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and I'm talking with Dennis Patterson. He's a Law Professor at Rutgers University, also a Law and Legal Philosophy Professor at Surrey Law School in Britain. And he's the author of a new book titled, "The Weaponization of Expertise: How Elites Fuel Populism” and we've been discussing the book. I want to come back to something that you mentioned, this idea that, you know, the facts drive everything. And not only that, but if you question them in any kind of way, among these, within these elite cultures, the academy being one, that you are immediately kind of dismissed, and also that the conversation becomes very polarized. This is something that I have experienced and I've talked to other guests about and I wanted to get your thoughts about it. It seems to me that there is this blending of partisanship, political polarization, and this sense of science and ways that you've been discussing it in this strange way that very immediately in any kind of conversation that's about policy, things do get put in these polarized camps. And not only if you have a, what would normally be a legitimate question to ask, if you even ask that question, one of the moves that gets made is, if you're in the academy, you're put into a Republican camp and immediately suspect, you know, even questions something to even ask probing follow up. Is that something that you're getting at here in this?
DP: Well, we're not only getting at it, but we're getting it. We had we had colleagues who read some or all of our book.
GR: Yeah. I wanted to ask you about your reaction you're getting from your colleagues, so go ahead. I’m glad you bring it up.
DP: I mean, some people said you guys sound like you're Trump supporters. Which, my reaction was like, the book is written in English, what do you mean? Like, you know, how can you possibly say that after… And the answer is because you deigned to question the mantle of authority. So, for example, to give you a very, very concrete example of life during the pandemic. So Rutgers had a policy where everybody in a classroom had to wear a mask. And this went on for, I think, it went on for two years. In the last semester the edict was, and this was after like Penn and lots of other local schools had abandoned masks, Rutgers kept it. And there was one guy who would send out the emails say(ing), you have to, wearing a mask as mandatory. And I said to him, I wrote him an email and I said, let me get this straight. The students sleep together, eat together, recreate together, they only have to wear a mask when they come to the classroom, what science supports that? Never got an answer. And it turned out that there were some people in the AAUP, the union, my age, your age, right, who wanted all the students to wear masks because they were worried about getting a virus. Now, of course, all the teacher had to do was wearing N-95 properly, and they would have been fine. But this is the kind of problem that I experienced because I could never get an answer to this question. And then I would ask my colleagues, why do you think this book has a Trumpian tilt to it? Well, because you're criticizing the government's handling of COVID. And I said yeah, but I mean, you know, first of all, everybody in Sweden was supposed to be dead by the end of the week and it turns out their death rate was no worse than any other Scandinavian country, please explain. I mean, they just, it's a kind of a mindset that if you just, look, I've been an academic for 35 years. When I started out, you could question anything, you could demand an explanation of anything. Now, if you raise a question about the plausibility of a fair number of policies, you are ostracized.
GR: Right.
DP: That is a real phenomenon. It's not just you know, what fire and other people are reporting. I mean, I can tell you from the front lines, people don't want to raise questions. Now, when you're my age and my seniority, you don't care.
GR: (laughter)
DP: I mean, I couldn't care less what you think. I mean, what's the Dean going to do, fire me for asking a question? No, you know, none of that's going to happen. But it's not as interesting because, you know, there's only sort of one point of view. And for the younger people, they don't want to say a word because they're afraid of saying the wrong thing.
GR: Well, that's a whole ‘nother can of worms. I will say that I had a day in my class this semester, and the students brought it up, where there was a very honest conversation about the concerns that they had about, in a sense, falling out of line with some of the other classes that they were taking.
DP: Well, you know what's interesting about that topic...
GR: Well, I'll just say some of the stories were for me, they were hair raising. They were worse than I thought.
DP: But tell me why. You know, because in my, I just finished teaching populism again. The students report that they're worried about other students commenting on them. Is that your experience?
GR: No, these students were worried about their grades and the faculty. And my experience at Syracuse, every place is different, is that the students aren't that bad with each other. Now, is a there is a subset, right, who's very vocal and very doctrinaire. But for the most part, the students are pretty open and pretty eclectic and tolerant. It's, their report is concerns about the faculty. And this is particularly since this most recent election. You know, I'm a political scientist, I think about this a little differently. And I don't want to take too much of the time that people want to hear from you. But in the dynamic that you're talking about, one of the things that seems to me that's going on is, let me make a specific example with Fauci, for example. I think the mindset is, Trump is criticizing Fauci, therefore, I cannot criticize Fauci.
DP: Right.
GR: That's the driver. And that's where I think, like, I would put the partisan piece up front. Let me ask you this question. And if, by the way, I should say to my listeners, if you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is the Law and Legal Philosophy Professor Dennis Patterson and we're discussing his new book, “The Weaponization of Expertise…”. I've got a few writers on the program that have written in a similar vein to you. They're not making your specific argument, but they're concerned about different aspects about academic and intellectual culture, thinking and political assumptions. Musa al-Gharbi is one of them I've spoken with, wrote the book, “We've Never Been Woke”. I get the sense that there is now a growing recognition of this as a problem that includes your arguments among a group of elites that cut across different political ideologies. Like you say, you're not a Trump supporter, and it's growing. Is your sense that even though there is this backlash, there's starting to be some wind in the sails of folks that are questioning this?
DP: Couple of puffs, a couple of gusts of wind, but I'm not I'm not sure that things are going to change that much that quickly. One thing that I think has gotten better is the, it has gotten better on the left, and that is the cancel culture atmosphere. But now Trump is filling that void trying to do the whole thing from the right. And so net / net, things are pretty much where they’ve been. But I don't think any conservative on an American campus is suppressing the speech of their more left wing colleagues. But certainly the opposite has been true for decades. You couldn't criticize anything without being ostracized. And so I do think that there is, that in a sense, and I just sense this in the faculty lounge, that people are now of a view that we just, there is nothing about which everyone agrees. And so we have to hear the dissenting voices. Now, I think it'll be a cold day in hell, at least at Rutgers, before there's a space made for somebody who questions some of the more fundamental aspects of our institutional ideology, but hope springs eternal.
GR: Do you think that a more productive conversation about the problems that you are identifying here can happen once Trump departs the White House after that particular polarizing figure goes away? That maybe the conversation in the faculty lounge and elsewhere can begin to go forward?
DP: I would say no, but, and I'm not a pessimist by disposition. I mean, I may have Irish heritage, but I'm not melancholic at all. But I'm a realist and, look, I mean, people just, I'm at a law school that takes social justice as its number one institutional commitment, that's not going to go away quickly. I'm more interested in producing students who can pass the bar and be successful lawyers. That's my number one priority. So can we talk about it? Sure, we do talk about it now. I think people are polite, but, you know, I don't think much is going to change.
GR: Well, let me jump in if I can, just because we only have about half a minute left or so. I can't leave the conversation on this. Do you see a way out then? I mean, your final chapter is giving political judgment a chance. What do you mean there? In 30 seconds, get us out of this morass.
DP: Well, it starts with it starts with the recognition that your interlocutor is not someone who proceeds in bad faith, that in fact, people have different views of the world. It's like the old, you know, the old liberal political ideal that my conception of the good is something that I get to decide, not you, not the state. And so people have different competing conceptions of the good. If you cannot proceed in a respectful conversation where you take the other person seriously, you let to make their argument, you don't make ad hominem arguments about them, that's the sort of thing that I think we need to do. And I think in some ways that aspect is getting a bit is getting a bit better. Because Trump is such a polarizing figure, that no one really wants to be associated with that temperament. And it's all about temperament. If you evince disdain for people, no conversation as possible. So just at that very basic level, respect for your interlocutor is a great place to start.
GR: Well, we'll have to leave it there. That was Dennis Patterson and again, his new book, written with Jacob Hale Russell is titled, "The Weaponization of Expertise: How Elites Fuel Populism". Professor Patterson, thanks so much again for taking the time to talk with me and really appreciate you writing this book.
DP: Thanks.
GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.
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