I - ETA - Excellence in Teaching Award

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    2017 AESOP award for excellence in teaching
    (AESOP, 2017)
    THE THEME OF THE PRIZE IN 2017 One of the key features of political debates in recent times has been the rising scepticism displayed towards different forms of expert knowledge by certain political movements and sections of society. The prevailing mood was captured by an anti-EU politician during the 2016 UK referendum on EU membership, who remarked that people in Britain have “had enough of experts”. Such attitudes have been accompanied by the rise of mendacious and manipulative discourses and narratives in recent political processes, leading to the growing use of term ‘post-truth’ politics to describe this phenomenon. If the realization of true democratic participation requires what Habermas termed to be ‘undistorted’ communication characterized by the features of comprehensibility, legitimacy, truthfulness and sincerity, then the ‘democratic’ quality of many recent electoral episodes is perhaps rather moot. Instead crude majoritarian views of what is ‘right’ and ‘should’ happen dominate, whilst the rights of minorities, or those, including experts, who take a different view, to be heard are often questioned. This is the case even where a majority of the electorate did not actively support certain choices (e.g. 63% of the UK electorate did not vote for so-called ‘Brexit’), or in truth the absolute majority of voters backed the ‘losing’ side (e.g. Hillary Clinton polled more votes than President-elect Donald Trump in the 2016 US Presidential election). The political and societal context described above brings clearly into view notions of the relativity of what constitutes ‘truth’ and who can authoritatively claim to articulate it in given social situations. It presents particular challenges for societal groups such as professions that claim to possess forms of specialized or expert knowledge in relation to a particular field of human action and endeavour. It brings clearly into view notions of the relativity of what constitutes ‘truth’ and who can authoritatively claim to articulate it in given social situations.