The Yellow Wind

King-Yuh Chang (Author)

Perspectives on Development in Mainland China

The contributors to this book explore a variety of issues concerned with mainland China's political

Martin L. Lasater (Author)

Policy in Evolution: The U.S. Role in China's Reunification

The reunification of Taiwan with China is one of the most important policy issues of our time. The i

Jacob Hale Russell (Author)

The Weaponization of Expertise: How Elites Fuel Populism

2,The problem with expertise--and the dark side of the equation "knowledge = power." Experts are not infallible. Treating them as such has done us all a grave disservice and, as The Weaponization of Expertise makes painfully clear, given rise to the very populism that all-knowing experts and their elite coterie decry. Jacob Hale Russell and Dennis Patterson use the devastating example of the COVID-19 pandemic to illustrate their case, revealing how the hubris of all-too-human experts undermined--perhaps irreparably--public faith in elite policymaking. Paradoxically, by turning science into dogmatism, the overweening elite response has also proved deeply corrosive to expertise itself--in effect, doing exactly what elite policymakers accuse their critics of doing. A much-needed corrective to a dangerous blind faith in expertise, The Weaponization of Expertise identifies a cluster of pathologies that have enveloped many institutions meant to help referee expert knowledge, in particular a disavowal of the doubt, uncertainty, and counterarguments that are crucial to the accumulation of knowledge. At a time when trust in expertise and faith in institutions are most needed and most ...