Knowledge of AIDS Workshop Keynote Speaker Dr. Steven Epstein

Expertise at the Crossroads:

Health, Sexuality, and the Remaking of Expertise and Authority from HIV/AIDS to Covid-19

Speaker:

Dr. Steven Epstein

Professor of Sociology and John C. Shaffer Professor in the Humanities

Northwestern University

March 27th, 2025

Abstract: It has become common to speak of the “crisis” of expertise and to link growing distrust of experts with declining confidence in authorities of all sorts. To better understand and evaluate these perceptions of crisis, I focus attention on two underlying shifts in the politics of knowledge in the United States in recent decades that have transformed what it means to be an expert and who can plausibly serve as one: first, the diversification and proliferation of cultural authority, marked by a growing competition to provide answers and make pronouncements on how life should be lived; and second, the simultaneous rise to prominence of hybrid forms of “lay expertise” that include knowledge-empowered social movements. To ground my analysis, I focus on two domains—health and sexuality—where these transformations are especially evident. To bookend my analysis, I trace developments from the early years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic to the recent experience of Covid-19, proposing that in the crucible of pandemics the fault lines of expertise become particularly visible. Throughout, I seek to highlight recent scholarship that contributes to the rethinking of expertise. My aim is to provide a somewhat more hopeful account of the crisis of expertise, one that recognizes the risks of populist dismissal of experts but also emphasizes the potential virtues of democratic challenges to traditional expertise in the service of epistemic justice.