even in the worse ways. part of me–the democratic theorist and actor–understands that part of my mission is to expand the ability of folks to speak their “special” truth, even when that “special” is “special” as in “special” needs. we’ve got to make it so that people like my grandfather who didn’t have a high school degree the first can make sense of the world and argue for the common good against some knucklehead with a phd.
but the other part of me needs expertise. i wish john ridley would stick to writing about mutants.
Our public intellectuals will continue to have greater influence on the masses than our scholar-specialists, even in matters as complex as politics, until people who must labor at least forty hours per week find the energy and inclination to pursue their enlightenments earnestly, if autodidactically. Our most popular public intellectuals use the tools of rhetoric and entertainment in order to make the task of engaging their ideas less arduous for the hard-working folks who lack the leisure, inclination, or energy to read and study extensively and independently. Moreover, too many Americans fail to obtain the liberal arts educational foundations during high school (and often college) that would enable them to engage even some of your informative NPR essays.
The trained scholar-specialists must compete with the public intellectuals if they desire to influence large numbers. However, I’ve learned that most Ph.D.s (based on the small sample of a few dozen Ph.D.s I call friends) don’t have enough time to write exoterically and do the work that would advance or preserve their careers.
Yet I don’t know if much is lost when the public turns to public intellectuals, and authors such as Ridley, for worldly wisdom or barbershop philosophy and political council. Most of the Ph.D.s I know well are hardly generalists who have studied broadly and read much literature. Few of them have read much of the Western Canon; few know Shakespeare as well as they should. They are rarely strong synthesizers or analysts when engaging complex ideas outside their areas of specialization or dealing with matters that require real world practical wisdom in order to grasp well.
We all need more expertise. Those who have not had the leisure or the talent that would enable them to study with universities for more than six years need the expertise of those who have. And, those who studied with universities for six or more years during their young adulthoods, doing little else, benefit from the practical wisdom of those whose lots and tastes led them to very different lives.
Those public intellectuals who know best how to reach the masses who have led lives very different from the scholar-specialists should have a competitive advantage in the idea marketplace. And, since their variety of exoteric wisdom-rhetoric sells far better than that of Ph.D.s, who too often must write esoterically in order to command respect from their peers and keep food on their tables, they are certain to infest the masses’ minds with their form of expertise more than the Ph.D.s we have invested so much in.
On point.
There are a perverse, if understandable, set of incentives that basically privatize the contributions of university professors–by “privatize” here i mean relegating their contributions to the private sphere of academic journals and lecture halls. Peer review is required to separate the wheat from the chaff, and academic journals/presses are the best places to house the product that comes from this process. But there has to be more space for public knowledge work.
An essay that I transform into an NPR piece takes normally around an hour or so to write. By way of comparison a black empowerment paper I’m working on has taken something like two years plus to get published.