War College professor Tom Nichols will discuss his latest book, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge And Why It Matters. Nichols will explain how many Americans have begun to reject experts due to the openness of the internet, the emergence of a customer satisfaction model in higher education, and the transformation of the news industry into a 24-hour entertainment machine, among other reasons. Paradoxically, the increasingly democratic dissemination of information, rather than producing an educated public, has instead created an army of ill-informed and angry citizens who denounce intellectual achievement. When ordinary citizens believe that no one knows more than anyone else, democratic institutions themselves are in danger of falling either to populism or to technocracy or, in the worst case, a combination of both.

Tom Nichols is a professor at the Naval War College and at the Harvard Extension School, an adjunct professor at the U.S. Air Force School of Strategic Force Studies as well as a Senior Associate of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs in New York City and a Fellow of the International History Institute at Boston University. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Graham Center for Contemporary International History at the University of Toronto. Before coming to the War College, he taught international relations and Russian affairs for many years at Dartmouth College and Georgetown University. In Washington, he was personal staff for defense and security affairs in the United States Senate to the late Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania. Because of his work on the role of expertise, in 2017 Tom was named one of POLITICO Magazine's "POLITICO 50," the thinkers whose ideas are shaking up American politics and public life. He received his PhD from Georgetown, an MA from Columbia University, and the Certificate of the Harriman Institute at Columbia.

A book signing will take place after the presentation for those interested. Sponsored by the Friends of the Library.