Public 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