A new day in America: Intellectualism is back!

[Botnst]

A New Day for Intellectuals


The election has opened the door to education and expertise, but academics will have to earn respect

By ANDREW DELBANCO

Soon after election day, the columnist Nicholas D. Kristof wrote in The New York Times that the "second most remarkable thing" about the election was that "American voters have just picked a president who is an open, out-of-the-closet, practicing intellectual."

What goes on here? Was the historian Richard Hofstadter wrong in his classic Anti-Intellectualism in American Life to detect an irresistible current in our society of "resentment and suspicion of the life of the mind and of those who are considered to represent it"? Has that current weakened or been sufficiently dammed up to explain the election of a president who is reflective about history and ideas as well as about policy and practice?

Those questions were in the air last month in Seattle at the annual meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. The association is devoted to promoting liberal education — which it defines as one that develops in students "a strong sense of value, ethics, and civil engagement" — at all levels, from community colleges to research universities. Without discounting the importance of marketable skills, such an education should include the study of literary and historical texts, philosophical questions and scientific concepts, as well as engagement with foreign cultures.

Many people who attended the meeting felt that the spirit of anti-intellectualism emanating from Washington in recent years has hampered, or even stymied, the pursuit of those aims. The inquisitorial tone of former Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings's National Commission on the Future of Higher Education, with its focus on benchmarks and standardized testing, was frequently cited. But now beleaguered deans and presidents were hoping for better days ahead. What are the chances they are right?

Hofstadter's book is a good place to start in considering both strategies and prospects. Although not published until 1963, it was conceived in the 1950s, when, even more than today, the term "egghead" was an image of dysfunction and disloyalty. Hofstadter regarded anti-intellectualism as a kind of antibody in the national bloodstream — sometimes dormant, sometimes active — that reacts to "high" culture with an inflammatory response. He traced this attitude to multiple sources: including, in particular, the religious evangelicalism that flares up periodically throughout American history in reaction to the perceived decline of piety and morals and, more generally, public resentment toward those who, claiming expertise and "excellence," seem to condescend toward unlettered or uncredentialed people as somehow inferior or unworthy of respect.

Lurking in Hofstadter's book was a cyclical theory of history that attempted to account for why those attitudes wax and wane. Under Franklin D. Roosevelt, he wrote, "the intellectual had been in the main understood and respected," until that respect was swept away by a wave of philistinism. The titular chief of the reactionaries was Dwight D. Eisenhower, but the real ringleaders were "the unpalatable Nixon" and, of course, that avatar of "the vigilante mind," Joe McCarthy. By the time Hofstadter finished his work, he sensed that the pendulum was swinging back (or forth) again. John F. Kennedy was playing host to Nobel laureates at the White House, and Washington had once more "become hospitable to Harvard professors and ex-Rhodes scholars." Today there is reason to think we are living through another turn in the cycle. The philistines are out; the Harvard professors (Elena Kagan, Lawrence H. Summers, Cass R. Sunstein, et al.) are back in.

much more: http://chronicle.com/cgi2-bin/printable.cgi?article=http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i23/23b00801.htm

Intellectualism was never in America.

[Botnst]

Originally Posted by ForcedInduction

Intellectualism was never in America.

Oh.

Dang, I wondered why that egghead bastid wrote the silly essay. Thanks for clearing it up.

I didn't mean there were no Intellectual individuals, just that the vast majority of Americans are uneducated peons.

[Jorn]

Maybe in some parts of the country...

[MS Fowler]

I believe this argument has raged since before the Constitution was written. Do we trust an intellectual elite, or the great unwashed masses with our government?

[Botnst]

Originally Posted by MS Fowler

I believe this argument has raged since before the Constitution was written. Do we trust an intellectual elite, or the great unwashed masses with our government?

Both. That's the intent of the original design of the house & senate -- great unwashed vs patricians.

[mgburg]

Originally Posted by Botnst

Both. That's the intent of the original design of the house & senate -- great unwashed vs patricians.

We have Lawyers in the Legislative Branch, a Lawyer in the Executive Branch and what else in the JUDICIAL Branch?

Yep, we're screwed...

You'd think with that many lawyers in close proximity, how is it possible to get anything done?

Wait...THEY always get paid first, regardless whether they do the job or not...

[tankdriver]

Originally Posted by MS Fowler

I believe this argument has raged since before the Constitution was written. Do we trust an intellectual elite, or the great unwashed masses with our government?

It's hard to argue that they haven't been playing to dumber sections of society for a couple decades now.