Intellectuals in Politics and Academia

Intellectuals in Politics and Academia
Author: Russell Jacoby
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023-08-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9783031076480

This book addresses the fate of intellectuals in modern culture and politics. Russell Jacoby’s seminal The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe (1987, 2000) introduced the term “public intellectual” and gave rise to heated controversy. Here Jacoby assesses contemporary public intellectuals, their profound failings and limited achievements. The book includes biting appraisals of well-known intellectuals, such as Noam Chomsky, Hannah Arendt, and Bernard-Henri Lévy, as well as interventions on violence, utopia and multiculturalism.

Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers

Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers
Author: Edward J. López
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2012-11-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0804783969

Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers presents a simple, economic framework for understanding the systematic causes of political change. Wayne A. Leighton and Edward J. López take up three interrelated questions: Why do democracies generate policies that impose net costs on society? Why do such policies persist over long periods of time, even if they are known to be socially wasteful and better alternatives exist? And, why do certain wasteful policies eventually get repealed, while others endure? The authors examine these questions through familiar policies in contemporary American politics, but also draw on examples from around the world and throughout history. Assuming that incentives drive people's decisions, the book matches up three key ingredients—ideas, rules, and incentives—with the characters who make political waves: madmen in authority (such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Margaret Thatcher), intellectuals (like Jon Stewart and George Will), and academic scribblers (in the vein of Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes). Political change happens when these characters notice holes in the structure of ideas, institutions, and incentives, and then act as entrepreneurs to shake up the status quo.

Politics, Intellectuals, and Faith

Politics, Intellectuals, and Faith
Author: Matthew Feldman
Publisher: Ibidem Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9783838209869

This wide-ranging collection of essays examines modern intellectuals and ideologues. Matthew Feldman calls attention to the substantial role played in post-Great War Europe and the United States by religions--both familiar monotheisms like Christianity and secular 'political faiths'--over the last century of upheaval.

Intellectuals in Politics and Academia

Intellectuals in Politics and Academia
Author: Russell Jacoby
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2022-07-20
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 303107646X

This book addresses the fate of intellectuals in modern culture and politics. Russell Jacoby’s seminal The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe (1987, 2000) introduced the term “public intellectual” and gave rise to heated controversy. Here Jacoby assesses contemporary public intellectuals, their profound failings and limited achievements. The book includes biting appraisals of well-known intellectuals, such as Noam Chomsky, Hannah Arendt, and Bernard-Henri Lévy, as well as interventions on violence, utopia and multiculturalism.

Public Intellectuals

Public Intellectuals
Author: Richard A. Posner
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 465
Release: 2009-07-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0674042271

In this timely book, the first comprehensive study of the modern American public intellectual--that individual who speaks to the public on issues of political or ideological moment--Richard Posner charts the decline of a venerable institution that included worthies from Socrates to John Dewey. With the rapid growth of the media in recent years, highly visible forums for discussion have multiplied, while greater academic specialization has yielded a growing number of narrowly trained scholars. Posner tracks these two trends to their inevitable intersection: a proliferation of modern academics commenting on topics outside their ken. The resulting scene--one of off-the-cuff pronouncements, erroneous predictions, and ignorant policy proposals--compares poorly with the performance of earlier public intellectuals, largely nonacademics whose erudition and breadth of knowledge were well suited to public discourse. Leveling a balanced attack on liberal and conservative pundits alike, Posner describes the styles and genres, constraints and incentives, of the activity of public intellectuals. He identifies a market for this activity--one with recognizable patterns and conventions but an absence of quality controls. And he offers modest proposals for improving the performance of this market--and the quality of public discussion in America today. This paperback edition contains a new preface and and a new epilogue.

The Activist Academic

The Activist Academic
Author: Colette Cann
Publisher: Myers Education Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2020-05-29
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1975501411

Donald Trump’s election forced academics to confront the inadequacy of promoting social change through the traditional academic work of research, writing, and teaching. Scholars joined crowds of people who flooded the streets to protest the event. The present political moment recalls intellectual forbearers like Antonio Gramsci who, imprisoned during an earlier fascist era, demanded that intellectuals committed to justice “can no longer consist in eloquence ... but in active participation in practical life, as constructor, organizer, ‘permanent persuader’ and not just a simple orator" (Gramsci, 1971, p. 10). Indeed, in an era of corporate media and “alternative facts,” academics committed to justice cannot simply rely on disseminating new knowledge, but must step out of the ivory tower and enter the streets as activists. The Activist Academic serves as a guide for merging activism into academia. Following the journey of two academics, the book offers stories, frameworks and methods for how scholars can marry their academic selves, involved in scholarship, teaching and service, with their activist commitments to justice, while navigating the lived realities of raising families and navigating office politics. This volume invites academics across disciplines to enter into a dialogue about how to take knowledge to the streets. Perfect for courses such as: Introduction to Social Theory | Social Foundations | Certificate in Public Scholarship | Practicing Public Scholarship | Reimagining Public Engagement | Decentering the Public Humanities hrClick HERE to see a video of the book launch, moderated by Monisha Bajaj for Imagining America, with contributions from Margo Okazawa-Rey and John Saltmarsh. hrWatch the #CompactNationPod interview, which runs between minutes 9:35 and 48:45. In this episode, Marisol Morales chats with Colette Cann and Eric DeMeulenaere, as they share the true stories of their lives as activists, scholars, and parents who are trying to push forward social change through academic work.Compact Nation Podcast · The Activist Academic hr What does it mean to be both an activist and an academic? Watch the FreshEd podcast Becoming an Activist Academic, which features authors Colette Cann & Eric DeMeulenaere discussing their own journeys as a guide for merging activism and academia. hr

Intellect and Public Life

Intellect and Public Life
Author: Thomas Bender
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 1997-10
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780801857843

At a time of much unease in academia and among the general public about the relation of intellect to public life, Thomas Bender explores both the 19th-century origins and the 20th-century configurations of academic intellect in the United States. "Bender's positive, generous civil voice injects a soothing dose of optimism into current academic debates . . . ".--AMERICAN QUARTERLY.

Intellectual Leadership in Higher Education

Intellectual Leadership in Higher Education
Author: Bruce Macfarlane
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 195
Release: 2013-07-03
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1136729542

What is ‘intellectual leadership’ and how might this concept be better understood in the modern university? Drawing on research into the role of full or chair professors, this book argues that it is important to define and reclaim intellectual leadership as a counter-weight to the prevailing managerial culture of higher education. It contends that professors have been converted into narrowly defined knowledge entrepreneurs and often feel excluded or marginalised as leaders by their own universities. To fulfil their role professors need to balance the privileges of academic freedom with the responsibilities of academic duty. They exercise their academic freedom as critics and advocates but they also need to be mentors, guardians, enablers and ambassadors. Four orientations to intellectual leadership are identified: knowledge producer, academic citizen, boundary transgressor and public intellectual. These orientations are illustrated by reference to the careers of professors and show how intellectual leadership can be better understood as a transformational activity. This book tackles the question of what intellectual leadership actually is and analyses the questions most frequently associated with the role of senior academics, including: How can intellectual leadership be distinguished from other forms of leadership and management? How can professors balance their responsibilities both within and beyond the university? How can universities make better use of the expertise of professors as leaders? It concludes with recommendations for senior institutional managers on how to make more effective use of the expertise and leadership potential of the senior professoriate.

Taking it Big

Taking it Big
Author: Stanley Aronowitz
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2012
Genre: History
ISBN: 0231135408

C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) transformed the independent American Left in the 1940s and 1950s. Often challenging the established ideologies and approaches of fellow leftist thinkers, Mills was central to creating and developing the idea of the "public intellectual" in postwar America and laid the political foundations for the rise of the New Left in the 1960s. This book reconstructs this icon's formation and the new dimension of American political life that followed his work.