Professionalism and Expertise Today: The Princeton Conference

We have word of the conference Professionalism and Expertise Today, to be held on Friday, December 2, 2016, from 9 a.m. - 5 p.m, in the Friend Center Convocation Room, Princeton University.  We understand that it is open to the public, members of which should RSVP here for lunch and a name tag by Friday, November 25, 2016.  It is organized by the Center for the Study of Social Organization and co-sponsored by the Program in Law and Public Affairs.

From the conference's website:

Changes in technology and culture, politics, and the economy have drastically altered the environment of work and thrown old assumptions about professionalization into doubt. Long expected to be pillars of a “knowledge” or “information” society, the professions have run into a series of developments weakening their position: losses of autonomy, shrinking markets for their services, the substitution of algorithms for individual professional expertise, popular distrust, eroding support for exclusive professional jurisdictions. Join leading scholars from sociology, economics, and law for a discussion of these and other aspects of the new world of professionalism and expertise.

Paul Starr, Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton and an organizer of the conference observes that many of the forces to be explored are issues relevant to law and the legal profession.  he notes particularly:

In a variety of areas, organizations are substituting algorithms for individual professional judgment. But what happens to legal accountability in the process?

Licensing has spread in recent decades and covers an increasing proportion of jobs, while unionization has declined: What are the implications for economic inequality of these changing patterns of “occupational closure”?

Economic and technological change has reshaped the demand for professional skills, and several professions such as journalism and law are feeling the impact. What are the long-term implications?

Here is the schedule:

8:30 a.m. - 9 a.m. - Continental breakfast

9 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. - Panel 1:  Occupational Closure and Economic Inequality

Panelists: 
Morris Kleiner, University of Minnesota
Kim Weeden, Cornell University
Chair:  Paul Starr, Princeton University
This session is co-sponsored by Princeton University's Industrial Relations Section.

10:30 a.m. - 10:45 a.m. - Break

10:45 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. - Panel 2:  From Expertise to Algorithms? Professional versus algorithmic accountability

Panelists: 
Marion Fourcade, University of California, Berkeley
Frank Pasquale, University of Maryland Law School
Chair:  Joel Reidenberg, Fordham University School of Law

12:15 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. -  Lunch and discussion

Discussion begins at 12:30 p.m. - Professional Resistance to Political Authority

Chair: Kim Lane Scheppele, Princeton University

1:30 p.m. - 3 p.m. - Panel 3:  Sociology of Expertise

Panelists:
Ruthanne Huising, EMLyon Business School  
Hila Lifshitz-Assaf, New York University
Lauren Senesac, Princeton University
Chair:  Karin Knorr Cetina, University of Chicago

3 p.m. - 3:15 p.m. - Break

3:15 p.m. - 5 p.m. - Professionalism Today

Panelists:
Michael Schudson, Columbia University
Katherine Kellogg, MIT
Paul Starr, Princeton University
Chair:  Paul DiMaggio, New York University