Rules for Public Intellectuals

2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (04) ◽  
pp. 671-674 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Morris
Keyword(s):  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Public Intellectuals ◽  
Public Identity ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media

Like many political scientists, I willingly align myself with the intellectual side of the public intellectual title, but I make no claim to having a public identity. Still, I am moved to join in the shared confessions of public intellectuals (PI) by responding to Amitai Etzioni's article, because the ten-point distillation of his trials and tribulations so strongly resonates with my own experiences. However marginal they may be, frequent media commentaries and interviews have given me enough exposure to the treacherous pathways between scholarship and the media to sufficiently understand the PI's dilemma.

scholarly journals Evolution of a public intellectual: coral reef biologist Jeremy Jackson

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (01) ◽  
pp. C04
Author(s):  
Randy Olson
Keyword(s):  
Coral Reef ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Public Intellectuals ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media

This commentary is both a case study of the evolution of one public intellectual, and an analysis of how he has broadened his voice beyond the standard academic bubble. His story gives a perspective on the question of, “How do public intellectuals get their start?” They almost certainly begin as “mere” intellectuals — the public part comes later. But how? How does a studious academic go from following the media to being part of the media?

Understanding the Emerging Contemporary Public Intellectual: Online Academic Persona and The Conversation

2015 ◽  
Vol 156 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-132
Author(s):  
P. David Marshall
Keyword(s):  
Public Intellectual ◽  
The Self ◽  
Public Intellectuals ◽  
Intellectual Work ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Initial Analysis ◽  
The Media ◽  
Online Culture ◽  
The Individual

At its core, the power of the public intellectual is the capacity to make ideas move through a culture. This article looks at what kind of academic persona – that is, what kind of public self whose original status comes from intellectual work and thinking – navigates effectively through online culture and communicates ideas in the contemporary moment. Part of the article reports on a research project that has studied academic personas online and explores what can be described as ‘registers of online performance’ that they inhabit through their online selves. The research reveals that public intellectuals have to interpret effectively that online culture privileges what is identified as ‘presentational media’: the individual as opposed to the media is the channel through which information moves and is exchanged online, and it is essentially a presentation of the self that has to be integrated into the ideas and messages. From this initial analysis/categorisation of academic persona online, the article investigates the online magazine The Conversation, which blends journalism with academic expertise in its production of news stories. The article concludes with some of the key elements that are part of the power of the public intellectual online.

War and the Public Intellectual: Cosmopolitanism and Anti-Cosmopolitanism in the Kosovo Debate in Germany

1999 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Scott
Keyword(s):  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Public Intellectuals ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media ◽  
Nato Bombing

NATO's intervention in Kosovo dramatically highlighted the differences and disagreements between cosmopolitans and their critics. This article offers a critically summary of the arguments of both camps (and various positions within them) as they unfolded in the German media, and particularly in the broadsheet press, during the NATO bombing campaign. An attempt is made to fill in the broader context by pointing out some differences between the debates in Britain and those in Germany. While the implications and possible weaknesses of the cosmopolitan position is the main focus, the role of public intellectuals the media is also discussed.

Ambiguities and Clichés in the Debate about Public Intellectuals

2007 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara A. Misztal
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
New Left ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Public Intellectuals ◽  
The Public ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
The Public Sphere

This paper's purpose is to exam Turner's (2006a) thesis that Britain neither produced its own public intellectuals nor a distinctive sociology. It aims to outline difficulties with the logic of Turner's argument rather than to discuss any particular public intellectual in Britain. The paper argues that Turner's claim about the comparative insignificance of public intellectuals in Britain reinforces the myth of British exceptionalism and overlooks the significance of the contribution to the public sphere by intellectuals from other disciplines than sociology. It discusses Turner's assumption that intellectual innovation requires massive disruptive and violent change and suggests that such an assertion is not necessarily supported by studies of the conditions of the production of knowledge. Finally, the paper argues that Turner's anguish at the absence of public intellectuals among sociologists in Britain is symptomatic of New Left thinking that models the idea of the intellectual on Gramsci. In conclusion, the paper asserts that Turner's idea of the intellectual fails to note the tension at the heart of the role of public intellectual–the tension between specialist and non-specialist functions.

Libraries and the Preservation of Public Intellectual Space and Heritage

2020 ◽  
pp. 218-230
Author(s):  
Anil Kumar Nauriya
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Public Libraries ◽  
Public Library ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Public Intellectuals ◽  
The Public ◽  
Intellectual Heritage ◽  
Epistemic Justice ◽  
Primary Means

There is one aspect of Libraries that needs particularly to be highlighted, namely the role of the public library as a par excellence site that upholds the public intellectual space when contrasted to the more restricted academic space. It is a primary means by which public intellectuals and, through them, civil society, may hold even academia to account when the latter becomes confined by dead habits or restricted by institutional, bureaucratic, elitist or other, structures. It needs to be emphasized that academia and scholarship are not necessarily congruent. The interplay between academia and scholarship is crucial and that is made possible by the public library. Open libraries, especially public libraries, are at least as vital as the academia. The importance of a library or a museum is not necessarily related to its location or its size. “Preservation” and “intellectual heritage” need to be decolonized in order to realize epistemic justice.

scholarly journals ‘Very Inflated Rhetoric, Polysyllables and So On’: The Public Intellectual and Jargon in the Academy

2015 ◽  
Vol 156 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-107
Author(s):  
Cassandra Atherton
Keyword(s):  
Print Media ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Public Intellectuals ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Arena ◽  
Noam Chomsky ◽  
Online Presence ◽  
Large Sector ◽  
Computer Literate ◽  
The Way

The public intellectual, by their very definition, aims to reach a large sector of the public or publics. This requires proficiency, or at least the capacity to communicate in a variety of forms. As a large proportion of the public, to which the public intellectual appeals, is an online or cyber public, the importance of blogs in a computer-literate public cannot be under-estimated. The immediacy of the blog and the way in which an online presence facilitates immediate communication between the public and the public intellectual through the posting of comments online allow for a broad recognition of the intellectual in the public arena. My arguments will hinge on my interviews with contemporary American public intellectuals (Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Todd Gitlin, Camille Paglia and Stephen Greenblatt) and their views on communication in a society experiencing a decline in the publication of print media.

Situating Public Intellectuals

2015 ◽  
Vol 156 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. David Marshall ◽  
Cassandra Atherton
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Entry Point ◽  
Public Intellectuals ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
The Public ◽  
Australian Context ◽  
Attention Economy

The concept of the public intellectual has always been a somewhat contested term. This article serves as both an introduction to the debates around what it constitutes and an entry point into how the new media environment is producing a different configuration of the public intellectual. Through key thinkers who have addressed the idea of the public intellectual internationally and those who have focused on the Australian context, this essay positions the arguments made by the authors in this special issue. Via a short case-study of TED, the conference and online idea-spreading phenomenon, it argues that the contemporary moment is producing and privileging a different constellation of experts as celebrities that match the exigencies of online attention economy. A shifted conception of the public intellectual is beginning to take shape that is differently constituted, used and situated, and this article helps to define the parameters for further discussion of these transformations.

scholarly journals POPULAR HISTORY, POST-WAR LIBERALISM, AND THE ROLE OF THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL IN RICHARD HOFSTADTER'S THE AMERICAN POLITICAL TRADITION (1948)

2016 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 1133-1155 ◽  
Author(s):  
NICK WITHAM
Keyword(s):  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Public Intellectuals ◽  
Liberal Politics ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Tradition ◽  
Middlebrow Literature ◽  
The Status ◽  
Post War

ABSTRACTThis article examines the status of Richard Hofstadter's classic work The American political tradition (1948) as a ‘popular history’. It uses documents drawn from Hofstadter's personal papers, those of his publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., as well as several of his contemporaries, to pursue a detailed reconstruction of the manner in which the book was written, edited, and reviewed, and to demonstrate how it circulated within, and was defined by, the literary culture of the 1940s and 1950s. The article explores Hofstadter's early career conception of himself as a scholar writing for audiences outside of the academy, reframes the significance of so-called ‘middlebrow’ literature, and, in doing so, offers a fresh appraisal of the links between popular historical writing, liberal politics, and the role of public intellectuals in the post-war United States.

scholarly journals Becoming public characters, not public intellectuals

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lambros Fatsis
Keyword(s):  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Public Intellectuals ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
The Public ◽  
Jane Jacobs ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
Public Character ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Mind

Research into the sociology of intellectual life reveals numerous appeals to the public conscience of intellectuals. The way in which concepts such as ‘the public intellectual’ or ‘intellectual life’ are discussed, however, conceals a long history of biased thinking about thinking as an elite endeavour with prohibitive requirements for entry. This article argues that this tendency prioritizes the intellectual realm over the public sphere, and betrays any claims to public relevance unless a broader definition of what counts as intellectual life is introduced. By calling for a shift from the notion of public intellectuals to Jane Jacobs’ (1961) idea of the ‘public character’, a publicly situated and affect-laden conception of intellectual life is articulated with the aim of redefining intellectual life as an ordinary, collective pursuit, rather than the prerogative of a few extraordinary individuals, as well as restoring the role of the senses in theoretical discussions on the life of the mind. The theoretical scope of this article therefore is to cast the net wider in the search for meanings of what public intellectual life is, can or may be in a larger context than ‘intellectualist’ discussions currently allow.

scholarly journals The philosopher as engaged citizen: Habermas on the role of the public intellectual in the modern democratic public sphere

2021 ◽  
pp. 136843102110031
Author(s):  
Peter J. Verovšek
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Public Intellectuals ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Direct Role ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Relationship

Realists and supporters of ‘democratic underlabouring’ have recently challenged the traditional separation between political theory and practice. Although both attack Jürgen Habermas for being an idealist whose philosophy is too removed from politics, I argue that this interpretation is inaccurate. While Habermas’s social and political theory is indeed oriented to truth and understanding, he has sought realize his communicative conception of democracy by increasing the quality of political debate as a public intellectual. Building on his approach, I argue that giving the theorist a direct role in public policy undermines theory as an enterprise oriented towards truth while overlooking the contingency, participatory nature and complicated internal logics of social and political practice. My basic thesis is that Habermas’s understanding of the relationship between theory and practice overcomes these difficulties by providing an account of theory that is independent but simultaneously also allows philosophers to participate in politics as public intellectuals.

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