Exposing the notion of "expertise" when (ab)used to protect turfs

Edited/Updated on January 26, 2014

A few months ago, at a three-hour forum on "Immigration into the United States", I offered  to present the “Mexican" aspect of the issue along the lines of  my "Op Ed" on Mexican immigration.  I said to the organizers, "Ten minutes would be enough for me."  However, I was refused a "voice" under the pretext that they were only inviting experts (as speakers) and I was not an expert.

In this context, I want to make a point that some people employ the notion “expertise" or "credentials" to shut out differences and as a fence or fortification to guard and protect fiefdoms and to silence original or “radical” thought.  It is sometimes used (abused?) as an excuse to exclude inconvenient and, therefore, unwelcome “intruders” and to hide one’s stake in the status quo.  Thus it is that the notion can become a self-serving tool.

In my opinion, revolutionary thought has rarely come from the (so-called) experts or specialists.  Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King were hardly experts; one was a plain barrister/attorney and the other a simple clergyman.  Neither of them had a Ph.D. in political science.  Jesus was not an expert, not formally schooled (He was perhaps an excellent carpenter), but he 'preached' and revolutionized the world."

Three after-notes:

   

(A) To add to my "sentiment" of feeling excluded/rejected (in light of the fact that, earlier, I was asked to give a short course on India), I also felt that I was being pigeonholed, stereotyped.  Just because I am an Indian -- born and brought up in India -- I became an expert on India, in the Organizers' eyes, even though I do not have a single degree or formal expertise on any topic related to India except Sanskrit Drama!  "Deja vu", as they say.  I have said it before and I'm saying it again: Indians of my generation living in this country have been readily pigeonholed and stereotyped.  A relative of an Indian friend of mine was hired in a South Asian department of a university here in the United States though, again, he did not have a single degree or formal expertise on any topic related to India. I can think of many first-generation Indian immigrants here in the field of Humanities and Social Sciences who are compartmentalized and put in the cage of "You're allowed to speak only on India".

(B) I withdrew from the India-course deal.  Anyway, they would have, in the words of a friend, "shut me off from further discourse on the topic and interaction with participants at the school."  This is no particular loss because my wife and I had already decided to "downsize" my involvement with the University, given my age-consequent diminishing energy levels. 

(C) I didn't say the following to them at that time, but I was thinking, "If most Americans I came in contact with had defined and insisted on 'expertise' in the same restrictive way they did, I would have had NO career in the United States.  I would have been on Welfare (as a legal citizen, though)."  Post-Ph.D., I have not had a chance to teach even for a day in the area of my (formal) "expertise" --English Renaissance Literature and Linguistics.  If this other institute accepts my proposal, I'll be able to teach the English Sonnet -- something I love and, at the same time, something that falls within the area of my formal expertise.