Table Of ContentPublic Intellectuals in the Global Arena
Public Intellectuals
in the Global Arena
Professors or Pundits?
Edited by
Michael C. Desch
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
www.undpress.nd.edu
Copyright © 2016 by the University of Notre Dame
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Desch, Michael C. (Michael Charles), 1960–editor.
Title: Public intellectuals in the global arena : professors or pundits? /
edited by Michael C. Desch.
Description: Notre Dame : University of Notre Dame Press, 2016. | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016032991 (print) | LCCN 2016045449 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780268100247 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
ISBN 0268100241 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780268100261 (pdf) | ISBN 9780268100278 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Intellectuals. | Scholars. |
Intellectual life. | Scholarship and learning.
Classification: LCC HM728 .P834 2016 (print) |
LCC HM728 (ebook) | DDC 305.5/52—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016032991
ISBN 9780268100261
∞This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992
(Permanence of Paper).
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party
vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues
are encouraged to contact the publisher at [email protected].
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Public Intellectuals: An Introduction 1
.
Public Intellectuals in
a Comparative Context
one Historical Consciousness, Realism, 39
and Public Intellectuals in American Society
two American Public Intellectuals and the Early Cold War, 63
or, Mad about Henry Wallace
.
three The Public Intellectual in China 90
four Intellectuals and Intelligentsia in Latin America 130
five The Intellectual, Culture, and the State: The Experiences 148
and Failures of Enlightenment in the Arab World
.
vi Contents
Public Intellectuals across Disciplines
six The Philosopher as Public Intellectual 163
seven The Economist as . . . ? The Public Square and Economists 182
.
eight Of Mirrors and Media: The Blogger as Public Intellectual 214
nine Science in the Crosshairs: The Public Role of 247
Science and Scientists
.
ten Diplomats as Intellectuals: An Unlikely Combination 268
Reflections
eleven Reckless Minds: Caveat Lector 299
twelve Caveat Lilla: On Public Intellectualism 314
in the Twenty-First Century
thirteen The Public Intellectual as Teacher and Students 333
as Public: Declining and Falling Apart
.
fourteen The Ethical Imperative for Some Scholars to Be Public 349
Intellectuals and for the Rest to Let Them Do So
.
Concluding Thoughts: Toward a Typology 373
of Public Intellectuals
List of Contributors 397
Index 400
Acknowledgments
This volume had its origins in a conference I organized in the spring of
2013 after I spent the fall semester of that year as a fellow of the Notre
Dame Institute for Advanced Study (NDIAS). For his generous support
of the conference, and also for his providing me with one of the best se-
mesters I have had at Notre Dame, I am deeply indebted to my colleague
Vittorio Hösle, the founding director of the Institute. Of course, the In-
stitute, one of the jewels in the Notre Dame’s intellectual crown, would
never have existed without the inspiration of former dean of the College
of Arts and Letters, Mark Roche, and the generous support of the vice
president for research, Robert Bernhard. Vittorio’s able successor, Brad
Gregory, has generously continued to underwrite our efforts to turn the
disparate conference papers into a coherent book.
Directors of institutes come and go, but the permanent staffremains,
and invariably does the hardest and most critical work in a project of this
nature. This one would never have come to completion without the sup-
port and help of NDIAS’s executive director, Donald Stelluto, and his
colleagues Grant Osborne and Carolyn Sherman. Jonathan Vandenburgh,
a longtime NDIAS undergraduate fellow and a soon-to-be philosophy
graduate student, helped immeasurably in the final production of the
manuscript. My sincere thanks to all of them.
We were fortunate to be able to enlist a large number of Notre Dame
colleagues in helping to turn conference papers into chapters through
vii
viii Acknowledgments
their detailed and astute commentary. In particular, I am grateful to
Phillip Munoz, Michael Zuckert, Lionel Jensen, Paolo Carozza, Ann As -
tell, Rashied Omar, Richard Garnett, Jessica Hellman, Timothy Fuerst,
George Lopez, Katherine Brading, Daniel Philpott, Rev. Wilson Mis-
camble, C.S.C., and Don Howard. The Institute succeeded admirably in
its mission of bringing together Notre Dame’s brightest intellectual
lights with some leading public intellectuals from across the country and
around the world.
Finally, I have been privileged to know some modern Max Webers
who reassured me that it is still possible to pursue both science and poli -
tics as a vocation. Among the many terrific scholars who also found ways
to speak to the broader public that I have been privileged to know, I
would specifically mention Allan Bloom and Samuel Huntington. In
gratitude for all they did for me in my career, I dedicate this book to their
memories.
Public Intellectuals
An Introduction
.
Statement of Problem
What roles do public intellectuals—persons who exert a large influence
in the contemporary society of their country through their thought, writ-
ing, or speaking—play in various countries around the world and by
virtue of their different disciplinary and professional backgrounds?
There is, to be sure, a small literature on the role of public intellectu-
als in general, but it is organized around various thinkers rather than fo-
cused on different countries in a comparative framework or on the unique
opportunities and challenges inherent in different disciplines or profes-
sions.1Indeed, in his comprehensive treatment of the U.S. public intel-
lectual scene, Richard Posner notes that “a cardinal omission [in the lit-
erature] is the situation of the public intellectual today in countries other
than the United States.” In his view, such a study “would be a fascinating
project.”2
1
