archive

The decline of the public intellectual

Gazela Pudar Drasko and Aleksandar Pavlovic (Belgrade): Enmity in the Intellectual World: Global Perspectives and Visions. Germany’s newest intellectual antihero: The literary establishment condemns Rolf Peter Sieferle’s work — but people are buying it. Elif Shafak: “It is time we stopped denigrating the public intellectual”. Frank Bongiorno on Donald Horne’s “lucky country” and the decline of the public intellectual. Aejaz Ahmad Wani reviews The Public Intellectual in India by Romila Thapar. Intellectuals in the Czech Republic are heading towards catastrophe. What happened to America’s public intellectuals? Our nation has always depended on these heavyweights to guide us, but are they still with us, and if so, who are they?

How the superrich have funded a new class of intellectual: David Sessions reviews The Ideas Industry: How Pessimists, Partisans, and Plutocrats are Transforming the Marketplace of Ideas by Daniel Drezner (and more). We don’t need no stinking thought leaders: Despite Daniel Drezner’s arguments to the contrary, now is not the “worst of times” for public intellectuals. When was the golden age of conservative intellectuals?