Tom Nichols, author of The Death of Expertise, gave a talk in Choi Auditorium April 8 as the 2025 Jack Kemp ’57 Distinguished Lecturer, where he outlined his book and argued that the U.S. population’s deep resentment of expert knowledge is helping erode democratic institutions.
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By Jacob Whitney
“I think that the general lack of trust in experts goes back to the late 1960s and probably picks up speed in the mid-1970s. […] Everything in the 1970s felt like it was falling apart,” Nichols said. “I think what really hypercharges this is the end of the Cold War [because] people don’t feel the need to rely on experts to deal with this big threat [of nuclear war] looming out there.”
According to Nichols, anti-expert sentiment among politicians began in the 1980s, when the Reagan administration and Republican party realized their voter base was becoming increasingly uneducated, contributing to a decay in the U.S. political system in the 1990s. Nichols said by then, politicians on both sides began appealing to the growing disdain for expert knowledge by criticizing it and presenting themselves as ordinary people instead of qualified experts. According to Nichols, this shift has changed U.S. conceptions of democracy from everyone being equal before the law to everyone being equal in everything all the time.
“The problem was that Reagan said government is the problem because it’s not working well – this goes back to what I was saying about the 70s — and people took that to mean no one in government knows anything, and therefore experts are wrong,” Nichols said. “[Newt] Gingrich picked this up and turned [it] into something really toxic, and you saw this become a theme throughout the 1990s. Bill Clinton played that game [too] […]. Everybody realized that they had to play this game of trying to appeal to being just like other people, and I think that’s where everybody starts going off the rails.”
According to Nichols, the decline of higher education and invention of the internet have only exacerbated the death of expertise and respect for expert knowledge in the U.S., as these factors combine to make everyone feel more qualified than they really are.
“The problem is that the guy who went to MIT or Occidental and the guy who went to the local community college and goofed off for two semesters somehow became equal [after the Cold War]. [Then] there was the added nitro injection of the internet which did some terrible things like giving people shortcuts to feeling educated,” Nichols said.
Nichols also said that artificial intelligence (AI) is an emerging enabler of the public’s false sense of expertise.
“AI […] is only as smart as the people who programmed it,” Nichols said. “The danger […] is that it gives you packaged and coherent answers to questions that might be wrong, and people have become very passive in the way they receive information […] and [likely] don’t know whether it’s right or wrong.”
According to Nichols, the current Trump administration demonstrates how expert bashing can aid an authoritarian shift, and that from scandals like or to Trump’s attacks on the rule of law itself, the public should be extremely worried.
“We’re now in a time of politics of emotion. We’re living in a time where literally millions of Americans are having a break with reality. It’s not that we disagree about policy, it’s that [we disagree on reality],” Nichols said. “You cannot sustain a democracy on people simply saying, ‘anything that makes me uncomfortable didn’t happen.’ That’s like talking to toddlers.”
Nichols said that The Death of Expertise started as a viral 3,000-word blog post born out of a heated internet argument with an anonymous young man about ties to Russia.
“[After the argument] I went to my blog, hauled off 3,000 angry words […] and that went viral, and then it got picked up by a right-wing magazine called , which I [regretfully] wrote for. I wouldn’t recommend you look at them now, but in [the past], they were a […] right of center politics and culture site,” Nichols said. “I shaved [my post] down and […] It was the most read piece on their website about 11 years ago. I got a call from the politics editor at Oxford University Press, and he said, ‘have you thought about turning this into a [250-page] book?’”
Nichols also said that while experts are owed a degree of deference, everyday people — especially young people — must have a voice and be encouraged to engage with experts.
“I never said people shouldn’t have a voice. I write for the general reader, but this doesn’t stop me from pointing out how ill-informed people are,” Nichols said. “We shouldn’t discount the views of the young [either]. Engage me, fight me, bring it on, but remember we don’t have the same level of expertise.”
Interim Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College Kathryn Leonard said Nichols’ approach to engaging with everyday people inspired her to choose him as this year’s Kemp Lecturer.
“I have followed Tom Nichols for a long time on social media [and] even with all the trolling that he gets, he’s been very respectful […] and If somebody is engaging in good faith, he will absolutely engage in good faith,” Leonard said. “He’s someone who could be very removed […] but he absolutely spends his time engaging with the regular people in the world.”
Leonard also said she connected with Nichols’ advocacy for being an effective, well-informed participant in the U.S. political process, and that she hopes to instill these values in Occidental’s student body.
“Whatever someone’s political view is, I want them to be well informed in that view. I want them to understand that view. I want them to be able to defend that view. I want them to be able to understand the other person’s view and I want them to be able to engage effectively, as a member of our community,” Leonard said.
In The Death of Expertise, Nichols said he still has faith that the United States can mend its relationship with expertise.
“I continue to believe the people of the United States are still capable of shrugging off their self-absorption […] and taking up their responsibilities as citizens,” Nichols said in his book. “They did it in 1941 and again after the trials of Vietnam and Watergate, and yet again after 9/11, and in my view, they did it by turning Donald Trump out of the White House.”
Nichols ended his lecture by suggesting that experts and everyday people can both take steps to engage more effectively with each other and mend the United States’ broken relationship with expertise.
“Everyone including students and faculty needs more humility. Regular people should begin discussions with experts by asking questions instead of leading with opinions, and experts should stop cutting regular people out of conversations to stay comfortable,” Nichols said. “[We must] remember there was a time when stuff wasn’t obvious to us either.”
