ABSTRACT
For many scholars, being referred to as an expert on a particular issue or field causes some trepidation. In media and policy circles, commentary from scholars is intermittently requested and repackaged as expertise, which through manipulation, editing, or the material restrictions of the exercise not only lead to oversimplification, but also discredit the academic enterprise in the process. To what extent can we maintain deconstructive, destabilizing, and emancipatory possibilities (to name just a few) once we accept the mantle of the expert? Does this mantle of expertise hinder the commitment to the Coxian notion of critical theory: unpacking and challenging the structures that underlie the world; or, is one forced down the road of what Cox (1986) labels “problem solving theory” and its avoidance of the underlying structures and economic and socio-political relations that underpin the knowledge claims and the existing order of things? Comfortably inhabited by the policy wonks, media hacks and hawks, and celebrated demagogues of the day, does our participation in media and policy forums force us to join this cast of characters, dooming us to be little more than a pesky gadfly, at best providing comic relief, and at worst the much needed counterpoint to legitimize the precooked sound bites and remedies of the bureaucrats?
