And I think experts fall into that. #LoveIsNotTourism https://t.co/3C7zMNiUfV, Note: my note to Bret was about Europeans not being allowed in while people are coming from countries that had worse vaccination administration rates and more prevalence of COVID-19. The professor grew up in Chicopee, Massachusetts. Tom Nichols 's email & phone Current Position: Contributing Writer at The Atlantic Location: Middletown, Rhode Island Experience: 34 years How to contact Tom Nichols Get email address: txxxn@theatlantic.com Phone number: +1-205-xxx-xx47 Last updated: 2022-04-16 Social media: Sign Up to Get Free Contacts Use a Browser Extension Opt-Out Much of what happened in Korea and Vietnamultimately constituting a tie and a loss, if we are to be accuratewas beyond the control of the American public. U.S. He is also a five-time undefeated Jeopardy champion. Christian Husbands, Ditch the 'Honey Do' List! My older half-brother, who lived a few streets away, was a police officer. 170 East 64th Street Flipboard. Thomas Michael Nichols [2] (born December 7, 1960) is an American writer, academic specialist on international affairs, and retired professor at the U.S. Looking at what we have in office and the whole spectrum, what could possibly go wrong?TOM NICHOLS: Let's just stipulate that World War III is the worst thing that can go wrong. I did get onea story I always tell out here on the roadfrom a molecular biologist in France, saying "thank you," and I thought, Wow! DEVIN STEWART: As some final advice for us, what can we do about it? Donald Trump didn't create this, but he certainly weaponized it politically, just as Brexiteers did in the UK. What are some other spillover effects globally?TOM NICHOLS: That's a good question, because I was surprised. It is an expansion of a 2014 article published in The Federalist. People would say, "Well, heres what I think about arms control." We want to reunite with our family kept apart by an unscientific, cruel travel ban. I said @BretBaier laundered your question as if you were a random viewer, which is a no-no. I think experts in other fields tend to want to do that out of the public eye because theyre so afraidand I think this is where it goes back to lay peoplethat lay people will say: "Aha! I have written about, tweeted about and even am organizing efforts to try to reverse this policy because it directly harms my family. Its my pinned tweet. I know you have a tight schedule here. Here we are again, trying to make our way around nuclear terms and concepts as war rages in the middle of Europe. It's not even in the ballpark. As a lifelong conservative choosing Crooked Hillary over the Swamp Drainer, I received a short burst of interest, especially from talk radio. My mother, for one. The soldiers who served overseas in those first years of major operations soon felt forgotten. Select this result to view Tom B Nichols's phone number, address, and more. "DEVIN STEWART: Okay, same title. Personal Life. But first, here are three great new stories from The Atlantic. Jeopardy isn't only about knowing stuff. The senior figures there responded immediately. It's important to note the date [January 2014]. Is there any hope?TOM NICHOLS: Yes. It's a great book, and it has a funny cover too.TOM NICHOLS: I should tell you that the cover has all of these fake Twitter quotes on it. https://t.co/YlB0iugVPz, Correct. In The Death of Expertise, Nichols condemns what he describes as the many forces trying to undermine the authority of experts in the United States. https://t.co/lu8BmsoYGH. https://t.co/EhJiai597Z pic.twitter.com/rABCmph5gY, Say, @ellencarmichael, you're a professional political consultant. Naval War College, and this is a very dangerous trend. Naval War College, and this is a very dangerous trend. (1/2) https://t.co/2BfNkuAtao, I didnt bring up illegal immigration. DEVIN STEWART: Is there a danger that Russia might take advantage of perceived ignorance in the White House, like Khrushchev did with Kennedy?TOM NICHOLS: I have that fear very strongly. As my colleague David Frum has put it: For good or ill, the Biden policy on Afghanistan is the same as the Trump policy, only with less lying.. It was the angry-old-man-yelling-at-clouds piece that I wrote, and that turned into the article that eventuallyOxford [University Press] actually came to me about the book because I wasn't sure that there was that broad an audience for it until the piece went viral. That's a no-no. Just give it up. After Tom completed his high school education, he attended Boston University and graduated with a bachelor's degree in Political science. DEVIN STEWART: Maybe they didn't have the word "metacognition," but they were onto TOM NICHOLS: It didn't rhyme with anything. By Tom Nichols Hulton Archive / Getty; The Atlantic. We are all in this miserable, frustrating boat. Why do people suddenly believe that they are the experts?TOM NICHOLS: The immediate default explanation is always the Internet, but I don't think thats right. We didn't really understand it." Well, and also, that Baiee added an inflammatory linking of two issues that the original questioner says did not have in the question which that we would not have known because the question was laundered through the host. That's normal. Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) July 30, 2021. I think that's where experts also get into trouble; we can be overly directive. Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) July 31, 2021. Would you attribute this scorn to the rise of populism worldwide? I promise Ill stop talking about the EU travel ban when they reverse it. We all paid for our dissent, in various ways. February 23, 2023. Many Americans will bristle at the idea that this defeat overseas can be laid at their feet. Tom: This has nothing to do with you, Ellen! And what if Trump wins? I had a lifetime contract with the Navy, but no contract is unbreakable. I think it predates the Internet, and I think it has to do with the growth of a strong streak of narcissism in American society. They head off expressions of this kind of social disapproval by being aggressive and performative, daring anyone to criticize them for feeling the need to be armed while getting milk and eggs at the supermarket. I suppose I'm not really supposed to sit here and say that. How Long Would the US Navy Survive in a Shooting War? But yes, 2016 was the year in which the anti-expertise or the death-of-expertise phenomenon became weaponized in politics.DEVIN STEWART: Since a lot of people seem to sympathize with the hate toward experts and people who areI remember Rush Limbaugh used to call them "pointy-headed intellectuals." Hes desperate. We believed otherwise, as a nation, because we wanted to believe it. There were a lot of professionals who reached out to me to basically say "Thank you for writing this." This question from a Republican consultant is completely valid, thats why I lied about who I got it from., Bob Sampson (@bobsalpha1) August 2, 2021, All you need to understand that freak-out from the defenders of that Fox segment a few days ago is to replace "GOP consultant" with "Democratic consultant" and change "Fox" to "MSNBC," and then ask what those same people would have said about it.They went nuts because they know. People have actually raised this with me, saying: "Gee, in Asia is this a problem? "The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matter (review)", "AJP's take on Tom Nichols's "The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters", "Book Review: The Death of Expertise, by Tom Nichols", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Death_of_Expertise&oldid=1112147211, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 24 September 2022, at 22:24. Republicans and their media enablers despise ordinary Americans. That's a political discussion that people have. https://t.co/SBR3v3ivV2. Seraphim Rose Discusses the Jewish Question - Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Englishman Drives Off Satanists and Rescues a 1000-Year-Old Church, When Knights Surrender Their Sword The Problem of Effeminate Men, Married at Age 16, Has 11 Children, Loves Her Husband, Lives in Russia, VIDEO: A Legendary American Monk Who Inspired Christians in Russia - Fr. I have not yet thought about a follow up or another edition. I teach and I write for a living. No one other than Ellen Carmichael is asking about banned travel from Europe. 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A few needed law enforcement to step in because of threats to their lives and to their families. And when there's something that happens, there's an investigation, and here's what we're doing, and here's the public report, and here's why it went wrong, and everybody can calm down." I was a founding member of the band of Republican defectors known as the Never Trumpers, and one way or another, the times I have lived inthe movement to protect American democracy from Donald Trump and to stop his reelectionwill come to an end in November. Saying something that is technically true while leaving out additional facts and context with the obvious intent of misleading the viewer is sneaky and unethical. He sits at the end of the bar, and he begins every sentence with, "Well, it's a known fact" or "Studies have shown, Diane," and he starts lecturing on something completely stupid that he has no idea what he's talking about. https://t.co/fuiST5S7BB. Pegoda praised Nichols for not conflating expertise with credentials, and, while avowing that the book has some shortcomings, it has the "potential to start more important conversations". I've gotten them from lawyers and a fair number from people in the teaching profession, so it's been very encouraging. Period. I used to think of myself as a gun-control conservativeI supported both the right to own firearms and the interest of the state to limit that rightbut Americas gun culture isnt about rights. "TOM NICHOLS: "I nailed it." Tom Nichols is a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Brexit, I guess, is going to happen, but you already see that they are stumbling toward it. At a minimum, I will join with other civil libertarians to limit the speed and depth with which the president will take us into authoritarianism. You need to spend at least an hour with me"whoever the Russia expert is"before you walk into that room." BREAKING: Defining Moment for Putin: Stand up to US/Israel Empire of Chaos, or Fold? Honest to God-a real viewer q. (2/2). I think one of the things that has always made America a special place is that because of the way our country was founded we don't instantly defer to rank or to educational credentials or to class or achievement. DEVIN STEWART: A couple more questions, Tom. Americans will now exercise their usual partisan outrage for a few weeks, and then Afghanistan, like everything else in a nation with an attention span not much longer than a fast-food commercial, will be forgotten. https://t.co/BKflCNL3L1, (Toms referring to Salena Zito, whom hes accused of fabricating sources and stories. I hope that this is purely alarmism on my part. (Im part of that last group. But I think the American and global airline industry says: "Look, we deliver. In the meantime, American citizens will separate into their usual camps and identify all of the obvious causes and culprits except for one: themselves. For my own part, I naively thought at the start of this madness that no one would much care what I said about Trump, at least any more than they did about my previous writing on politics. | About | Contact | Investors | Crowdfunding | RSS, Why this site is the very opposite of hateful - a Christian letter to my hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Obama Would Just Look Like a Fool: Why a Putin-Obama Summit Is a Bad Idea, Young Popular Russian Priest, Murdered by Islamic Fanatic: Reminiscences and Footage, The Most Breathtaking 'Lord Have Mercy' You Have Ever Heard, Beautiful, Unearthly Hymn Chanted by Russian Orthodox Choir in Empty Church, Russian Women Always Wear Headscarves to Church. They're foxes because theyre more willing to admit when they're wrong and they're more willing to integrate new information. https://t.co/AgFflqhmZ6, Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) August 2, 2021, They keep saying that who it came from doesnt matter while completely ignoring the part where Baier lied about it. They would today be trying to learn something from nearly 2,500 dead service members and many more wounded. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. I was pointing my criticism at Fox; only *you* keep trying to make it about you. PissedOffLawyer (@PissedOffLawyer) July 31, 2021. In some cases, I had to pass these threats on to federal law enforcement for assessment of risk not only to me, but to my community. Naval War College. My activism for #LoveIsNotTourism is in my freaking bio. What to do about the deadly misfits among us? What's different now?TOM NICHOLS: As I said, when I first started out, I was a Russia guy, Soviet Union. I didn't say you behaved unethically, @ellencarmichael. By hosting people-to-people exchanges, facilitating original research, and producing timely podcasts, videos, and reports on the most consequential moral, economic, and strategic issues of this era, Asia Dialogues advances cross-cultural dialogue and offers critical insights on how to reimagine the international system. It was a good question. I would say the two charges you can really lay at the feet of experts is that they tend to lack empathy because to them they live in a world where everything is obvious; they deal in a world of data, or they deal in a world of ideas. Tom, thanks again. How Reality Dating Shows Stoke Racial Tensions. I would take more of an international perspective on it now that I am more aware of how much of an international phenomenon this is. I think it's okay to take stuff from Twitter. Can you explain that phenomenon? "[6], Joshua Huminski of the Diplomatic Courier described the book as "timely", citing Donald Trump's statements on climate change and Pew Research surveys regarding genetically modified organisms. (Ill plead one personal exemption: When I was a little boy, relatives in Greece once posed me in a Greek Evzone-soldier costume with my uncles hunting shotgun. 20th-century Greek American writers (2 P) Pages in category "American writers of Greek descent" . But because I teach at a military institution, I am a Defense Department employee and I am therefore bound by the Hatch Act, which prohibits government employees from using their positions for political purposes. . 2. You need to have a particular kind of intelligence to play the game, an agile mind that can not only recall . Its unscientific and cruel. Biden was right, in the end, to bite the bullet and refuse to pass this conflict on to yet another president. Now that it looks like Trump is headed for defeat, some Republicans feel safe to criticize him again. There's an editor, I think it was at Business Insider, who said, "You know, almost all day traders go broke, and they would be better off working at Burger King because they are that bad at what they do. The speaker pays off his debts to the extremist base. He claims expertise in a lot of things, but his most recent . Today, there is a neediness in the gun culture that speaks to deep insecurities among a certain kind of American citizen. Some sent messages telling me that they looked forward to my official execution or other versions of my untimely death. Submit them on camera here by replying to this tweet on Twitter & you may just end up on @FoxNews. Early life and education [ edit] He blames trends in higher education (such as focus on self-esteem and tolerance of narcissism leading to grade inflation and over-confidence in one's own abilities), the Internet, and the explosion of media options for the anti-expertise and anti-intellectual sentiment which he sees as being on the rise. They have also lived in Troy, OH and Matthews, NC. He is the author of The Death of Expertise (Oxford 2017), Eve of Destruction (2008), No Use: Nuclear Weapons and US National Security (2013), He is currently a Senior Associate of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, a Senior Fellow of the Graham Centre for Contemporary International History at the University of Toronto, and Breitbart claimed I was breaking that law. Just because Tom Nichols doesn't care doesn't mean no one else does. If youre inclined to play video games, New Vegas is a kitschy, retro-sci-fi experience featuring some great old music andI am not kiddinga cast that includes Wayne Newton. What I do know is that, regardless of what any one of us does individually, two aspects of the Never Trump movement will outlast Trump. Watch. Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault From Within on Modern Democracy. This comment reveals the depths of the Republican Partys moral collapse. Were at war. Well, that phenomenon actually has a scientific basis called the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is that the people who are the least competent at something have the greatest tendency to overestimate their competence at it.DEVIN STEWART: That's because they lack the intelligence to be self-aware?TOM NICHOLS: They lack a particular skill called metacognition, which is the ability to step back and see that you're doing something poorly. There's much more of a hierarchical respect for expertise and education." Now I dont feel that one bit. I used to think this was just a local phenomenon, but as it turns out, when the first article I wrote on this got published I started getting letters from all over the world, and Im starting to think it's a developed-world phenomenon. What's the risk here, for example, in U.S. foreign policy? I could . When have I ever read Breitbart? I responded. At this point, Carmichael's friend @wupton white-knights his way over to say: No, no, she's really raising this question, and it's a good thing to ask, because it's legit (even though she just said it wasn't in her original question)./4https://t.co/68gP9WbUlT, As this devolves into people all frantically trying to extricate themselves from a bad planted question while "Yakety Sax" plays, Will remembers when I smoked cigars with him in the days before The Federalist spoke up for Roy Moore./5https://t.co/wDWeLR2ija. And it's humbling. I dont have the energy or expertise to debate whether the Supreme Court should have taken on the case of a New York State law that limited the ability to carry weapons around in public. Some turned out to be as racist and authoritarian as Trump himself, while others merely confirmed that they were little more than vacuous opportunists who were capable of betraying the Constitution at will. CJ Ciaramella (@cjciaramella) July 31, 2021. But as comforting as it would be to blame Obama and Trump, we must look inward and admit that we told our elected leadersof both partiesthat they were facing a no-win political test. That was the big change. People who have talked about talking to him just say it's impossible to brief him because he just doesn't have a very long attention span. There is nothing nefarious about this. TOM NICHOLS: It was very kind of Ian to add that as well. "DEVIN STEWART: "Nailed it. TOM NICHOLS: Thanks for having me, Devin. And now those same Americans have the full withdrawal from Afghanistan they apparently want: Some 70 percent of the public supports a pullout. It turns out it's a true science thing; it actually happens.TOM NICHOLS: Exactly. Incredibly screwed up. Thats Tom Nichols in a nutshell. The US Outspends Russia 10X On Military, But They Are Equals. If you smell something delicious wafting around the entire state of Rhode Island, that'd be my house." Our next-door neighbor was a police officer. [4] Andrew Joseph Pegoda disagreed on the last point, writing that The Death of Expertise "does what good books do and provides some possible solutions". https://t.co/qIvLRlc7ir. Tom Nichols, who used to consider himself a conservative, has fully embraced his inner snob. I believe that if all of us had caved, Trump would now be much closer to victory, not just at the polls, but over the Constitution itself. While some lost money, all lost friends. He is a professor emeritus of national-security affairs at the U.S. Sign up for it here. The gun owners I knewcops, veterans, hunters, sportsmenowned guns as part of their life, sometimes as tools, sometimes for recreation. I do political/policy PR on totally unrelated topics so Im therefore ineligible to petition my government on this one that impacts my family. Tom Nichols dissects the dangerous antipathy to expertise. Planting a question by asking it publicly on Twitter along with dozens of other people in the #LoveIsNotTourism movement. https://t.co/FFboS7AVzl, Ellen Carmichael (@ellencarmichael) July 31, 2021. (I had been asked some years earlier to be a contributor when the publication launched. But I dont believe that those of us who opposed Trump will declare that bygones are bygones with conservatives who supported him and go back to partisanship as usual. "DEVIN STEWART: You should. For most of us, media appearances came only with a ride to the studio and free coffee. If we were sitting here a year ago, wed be looking at Brexit; wed be looking at the rise of Marine Le Pen; wed be looking at these populist movements in Europe, all of which seem to have pretty much burned themselves out within a year. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, and he is author of The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters.