Archives for December 2017

As a stop on his book tour, Dr. Tom Nichols visited the University of Texas and gave a lecture concerning his newest work, The Death of Expertise. Dr. Nichols is a professor at the U.S. Naval War College and has written and published seven books on the topic of national security. The Death of Expertise concerns the wave of anti-rationalism sweeping the nation that has been building for years, culminating in the election of President Trump. Nichols mentions a few alarming examples to prove the existence of a post-rationalist society: a poll regarding whether the U.S. should bomb “Agraba,” a fictional land from the film Aladdin, produced passionate approval from Republicans and fervent disapproval from Democrats but hardly any realization that this land does not exist. Nichols points to our constant consumption of information, the death of the American university as a place of learning and its transformation into a client-serving experience, and the nature of the chaotic world we live in as causes of the rise in prideful ignorance. This ignorance, he argues, is a major threat to national security.

Unfortunately, Nichols’s latest work is anything but original. While this topic is important and indeed a national security concern, the presentation came off how I almost expected it would: a Baby Boomer complaining about millennials. Original. We’ve watched Jimmy Kimmel. We’ve seen people pretend they know where countries are on a map, that they love the band “Churros” even though this band is completely fictional. People pretend they know an answer instead of admitting their ignorance. In many ways, I am on the same page as Nichols. However, I’m unsure this is a new phenomenon. Additionally, I wish he had taken it further. Nichols failed to entertain challenges to his argument or to discuss any other possible factors in Trump’s election and the phenomenon of anti-rationalism. It is crucial to remember that this lecture was, at the end of the day, a sales pitch. 

I take issue with Nichols’s characterization of anti-rationalism as new or that we are, at least, experiencing a heightened period of this phenomenon. Instead, we exist in a period of heightened visibility. We have the capability to project our opinions to a mass audience and to digest those of countless others. The internet has revolutionized our involvement in politics and how we communicate with each other. We can read articles, watch political debates, publicly interact with peers over social media regarding political opinion. But, the bottom line is that politics is and has always been personal. More than anything, we vote based on how policy will affect our lives as individuals belonging to specific social groups and with specific values. Oftentimes, this means people selectively digest news that reinforce their views. However, in years before the proliferation of the internet, this too was often the case — it just took a different form. Instead of ignoring opposing viewpoints, people didn’t have to face them. The U.S. was more segregated racially, socioeconomically, ideologically. We can’t measure and compare the level of ignorance then and now. We can’t say that America is more willfully ignorant now than before. The two contexts are fundamentally different. Instead, we should independently analyze how the proliferation of the internet and media has revolutionized the political process. Once this occurs, we can consider how to more responsibly utilize our access to information as a means of education.

I find Nichols’s simplistic explanation of the Trump victory negligent. He boiled the victory down to Trump’s anti-factual method of speech, stating that it appealed to the willful ignorance of present-day America. He ignores the complexity of issues surrounding the election. He does not discuss the role of racism and xenophobia following a black president, the loss of manufacturing jobs in the Midwest, sexist beliefs impeding the election of a women, or any other prominent factor. Because Nichols was so preoccupied with selling his relatively shallow argument, his neglect of nuance or intellectual diversity caused his lecture to fall flat or offer any original insight.

While Nichols did only have one hour and a half to present a 252-page book, his lecture could have been more substantial. He mentioned many enormous concepts that are impossible to discuss effectively in an hour. Briefly touching on partisanship, media, the internet, and the nature of the modern university, Nichols attempted to provide an extensive argument by citing all these examples as contributing to the rise in anti-rationalism. However, I was left feeling like each of these topics deserved their own one-hour lecture. While I found “The Death of Expertise” to be thought-provoking and attention-grabbing, it fell short of being much else.

On September 19th of this fall semester, I got to hear acclaimed writer and Middle Eastern policy expert Ken Pollack speak at a lecture entitled “The Middle East: How It Got so Bad and What To Do About It”. As a senior at UT Austin majoring in Arabic, experienced in a wide range of Arabic research from Sharia law to radicalization, I was skeptical. After the talk had finished, as a senior at UT Austin majoring in Arabic, experienced in a wide range of research, it turned out, I was right to be skeptical. To start off with, his lecture, including the title, was far too broad. It can be very damaging to cohesive discourse around polarized topics to speak on the Middle East as a whole. It causes people to categorize the Middle East even more so in their minds as a completely homogenous society, culture, religion, and ethnicity. It is impossible to have an actual productive dialogue when two or more people are discussing such a broad topic, because one statement that might be true for one part is not true for the other, and this almost certainly leads to confusion and polarization.

   Although I have to give Pollack credit where credit is due. He managed to polarize me from the discussion within one minute of his lecture when he sarcastically criticized the over emphasization of the Sykes-Picot Agreements affect on the Middle East. The majority of Middle Eastern scholars focus intently on how the drawing of new and artificial borders under Sykes-Picot after WWII left the Middle East and North Africa fractured, incongruent, and impaired. Even though some scholars do not focus on it with high regard, almost all acknowledge its damaging effects. What was also extremely off-putting, was to have a man who is not from the Middle East or North Africa, claim that such a thing as Sykes-Picot and colonization in general, had little effect on the Middle East. If he had bothered to back up this point with trusted data of interviews from many different regions in the Middle East and North Africa, that would have made it slightly better. However, Pollack still would be missing a fundamental point. Deep understanding of different regions of the world is not just about looking at economic trends in the area and then claiming something did not affect that region, it is about understanding how people of that region view it.

Regardless whether Sykes Picot affected the MENA region economically, it will always affect the area culturally because of how people have internalized and experienced colonialism. To top it off, he justified his position on Sykes-Picot by citing himself and two other scholars (not from MENA as well) drawing borders themselves for an exercise with Vanity Fair.

  Pollack’s apathy towards people’s experiences and perspectives on their history in their homeland was extremely ill founded, to say the least. He continuously put topics in terms of US interest, never considering humanitarian reasons, which is not in itself damaging but does not paint an accurate and complete picture of the topics he was referring to. When addressing the civil war in Syria, he clearly said the only interest that the US has in the country is containment and prevention of spillover. However, he failed to mention how the US refusing to aid the countless people who are dying or are in danger is perpetuating a horrible stigma of the US in the MENA region. In short, he paid almost no attention to MENA popular opinion. I did not  know  someone could speak about an area for an hour long without discussing that regions public opinion, but Pollack surpassed  my expectations .

  He concluded criticizing Trump’s simplistic attitude towards ISIS and Iran, saying “blowing ISIS to smithereens and handing Syria to Iran and Russia is not the answer”. Unfortunately, he did not get more specific from there. Although his conclusion mirrors numerous facebook comments, and his perspective on the MENA region excludes Middle Easterners and North Africans, I did learn that Vanity Fair is a well trusted academic journal.

  

 John Brennan, former Director of the CIA from 2013 to 2017, visited his alma mater in November this year. He returned to UT Austin to accept the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Clements Center for History, Strategy, and Statecraft. Upon his visit, Brennan gave a speech to UT students, entitled “ The Ethos of Public Service”. It is hard to imagine an old, white, bureaucratic man, engaging with young, liberal, and forward thinking UT students. My generation is distrusting of the previous one and we are constantly scrutinizing their every word, looking for biases and logical inconsistencies. To add to that, the CIA does not exactly have a good reputation among UT students. We remember incidents of waterboarding, Abu Ghraib, and many of us consider Snowden a personal hero. Brennan had his work cut out.

 We entered the auditorium, cold from the rain, and not sure what to expect. Post Trump election had us all on the defense. We were prepared to hear rhetoric dismissive towards millennials, downplaying racism and sexism, and antiquated views on the rest of the world. Brennan began by recounting his time at UT. He was studying for his masters in government and Middle Eastern studies. He mentioned how his wife supported him in the early years, as a gym teacher. Nothing he said was exactly sticking out to us until he said something none of us could expect. During his first year at UT, Presidential elections were being held and Brennan did not know who to vote for. He did not consider himself a Republican or a Democrat and was still unsure of politics in general. As a result, Brennan voted for the communist nominee. This piece of information finally got our attention. One shared experience that almost everyone at UT can relate to, is befriending a student who refuses to identify with any party lines, claiming corruption in both camps, then swinging to an extreme political side.Suddenly, the bureaucrat who seemed very far removed became a friend of ours we all knew.  He painted himself as someone who used to be in our shoes, unsure of the world, skeptical of authority, and eager for change.

  As the talk went on, we all laughed when he mentioned confessing this story to CIA officers interviewing him and listened intently. He approached hard topics that we were expecting him to gloss over. He spoke about his own mistreatment towards marginalized groups in the beginning and how he is deeply sorry today. He spoke about the need for diversity within the Agency. He also spoke about Trump and how he now believes that the U.S. should create a law that sets requirements for future presidents, to ensure that someone lacking government experience cannot be elected. Overall, he touched on many topics of social justice that I was not expecting him too. However, his attitudes towards diversity and marginalized groups of people, though well intentioned, were lacking understanding and complexity. Brennan falls into the camp of people who believe that once you are hired, you are completely empowered. He failed to recognize institutional biases, such as harassment in the workplace, biased systems that are already in place, and overall cultural illnesses that plague every office. He did not seem exactly willing to enter into the narrative of people minority and see issues from their perspective.

    His overall message, urging students towards public service, was more of a desperate cry than a confident encouraging word. He regularly brought up Trump and his failings as President. Brennan voiced his genuine fear and concern for his country and public disdain for our current President. Although it was encouraging to hear an older white man start to handle topics of equality and attack Trump’s haphazard foreign policy, I found his address lacking conviction. Brennan as a leader should have by example, portrayed a better way to approach combating President Trump. Brennan is a 30 year plus bureaucrat and I was surprised that he criticized Trump so adamantly, yet took no responsibility of where he failed as a government official to engage his country’s public and speak up against him. Now Brennan is very vocal against Trump, online and at speaking events, yet he provides no solution to prevent this type of election again or how to handle the current issues now. For all of his talk of leadership, public service, and duty, he seems to have abandoned his own.