Institutions deserve to lose the public's trust

And it's up to them to earn it back

Photo by Zetong Li, courtesy of Pexels

Our democracy is in peril. This statement has become a common refrain. The loss of trust in established institutions is pointed to as a symptom of the trouble American democracy faces. When complaints are expressed about declining trust, the conversation shifts to how we can restore it. The institutions themselves are rarely called upon to account for the public's loss of trust in them; it seems they are not to blame. Rather, social media is to blame; disinformation is to blame; Joe Rogan is to blame.

But institutions are doing themselves no favors. They deserve some (much? all?) of the blame for declining trust.

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT)—America's largest teachers union—discouraged the opening of schools during COVID lockdowns and maintained this stance while other indoor establishments were opening. That is, until Trump was no longer president. Once he was out of office, and Democrat Biden took over as our leader, the AFT started advising schools to reopen. The abrupt switch in advisement was either a coincidence, or it was political. My guess is, given the all-too-common position of "disagree with President Trump no matter what," even if he's correct, the AFT's stance pre-Biden was political. Decisions based on politics, not data, or even public opinion, cannot be trusted.

Stanford University launched the Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative in an effort to "eliminate many forms of harmful language, including racist, violent, and biased (e.g., disability bias, ethnic bias, ethnic slurs, gender bias, implicit bias, sexual bias) language in Stanford websites and code." (Following unsurprising backlash, they have since removed the document from their website.) This is what committees of the university—a prestigious institution whose mission is supposed to be teaching and research—are spending their time working on. Such a focus is not only out of step with what ordinary people are concerned about, it conveys a message to many that the work taking place on university campuses is ideological, elitist, and unimportant. If the public looks to universities to produce cutting edge research and innovative solutions to problems, trust will certainly diminish if instead they are perceived as the language police.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) now recommends that overweight and obese children be given the option of drugs and surgery to help with weight loss. The fact that a medical institution would make such a recommendation says a lot about the state of health in the US. But ignoring environment and lifestyle, and instead jumping to pills and invasive medical interventions to solve obesity (and many other problems), calls into question other recommendations they make. An institution that defaults to surgery to solve problems that can be remedied otherwise will undoubtedly lose the trust of many parents and others interested in the well-being of children. Their trust problem is also the result of how they handled COVID-related recommendations for children, which was, like the AFT, often political, their stance on gender-affirming care, and their overbearing recommendation to not allow children under 10 years old to cross the street. 

Distrust in the FBI is likely a long-standing issue. But with the release of the Twitter Files, the public is re-affirmed in why the institution, along with social media giants, is not to be trusted. They were seemingly active in suppressing online information, such as research related to COVID and the Hunter Biden laptop story, that was politically inconvenient for those who occupied or wished to occupy the White House. We are told to blame social media for the spread of disinformation, but perhaps we should also blame them, and our government, for the suppression of factual information.   

Dissent is necessary and blind trust in institutions is unwise in a free society. These are just a few examples of institutions that deserve to lose trust and need to work on regaining it, rather than expecting it as a given.