Intellectuals In Politics And Academia

Author : Edward J. López
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0804783969
Total Pages : 225 pages
Book Rating : 4.65/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers written by Edward J. López and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-21 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers presents a simple, economic framework for understanding the systematic causes of political change. Wayne A. Leighton and Edward J. López take up three interrelated questions: Why do democracies generate policies that impose net costs on society? Why do such policies persist over long periods of time, even if they are known to be socially wasteful and better alternatives exist? And, why do certain wasteful policies eventually get repealed, while others endure? The authors examine these questions through familiar policies in contemporary American politics, but also draw on examples from around the world and throughout history. Assuming that incentives drive people's decisions, the book matches up three key ingredients—ideas, rules, and incentives—with the characters who make political waves: madmen in authority (such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Margaret Thatcher), intellectuals (like Jon Stewart and George Will), and academic scribblers (in the vein of Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes). Political change happens when these characters notice holes in the structure of ideas, institutions, and incentives, and then act as entrepreneurs to shake up the status quo.

Author : Richard A. Posner
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674042271
Total Pages : 465 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Public Intellectuals written by Richard A. Posner and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this timely book, the first comprehensive study of the modern American public intellectual--that individual who speaks to the public on issues of political or ideological moment--Richard Posner charts the decline of a venerable institution that included worthies from Socrates to John Dewey. With the rapid growth of the media in recent years, highly visible forums for discussion have multiplied, while greater academic specialization has yielded a growing number of narrowly trained scholars. Posner tracks these two trends to their inevitable intersection: a proliferation of modern academics commenting on topics outside their ken. The resulting scene--one of off-the-cuff pronouncements, erroneous predictions, and ignorant policy proposals--compares poorly with the performance of earlier public intellectuals, largely nonacademics whose erudition and breadth of knowledge were well suited to public discourse. Leveling a balanced attack on liberal and conservative pundits alike, Posner describes the styles and genres, constraints and incentives, of the activity of public intellectuals. He identifies a market for this activity--one with recognizable patterns and conventions but an absence of quality controls. And he offers modest proposals for improving the performance of this market--and the quality of public discussion in America today. This paperback edition contains a new preface and and a new epilogue.

Author : Russell Jacoby
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9783031076473
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Intellectuals in Politics and Academia written by Russell Jacoby and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Everything that Russell Jacoby writes is well worth reading. He's smart, independent, lively, well-informed and alive with the joy of intellectual combat. Agree with him or not-he makes you think and think hard about any and every subject he takes up." -Mark Edmundson, Professor of English, University of Virginia, USA "For over fifty years, Russell Jacoby has been one of our most relentlessly contrarian critics. In lucid and punchy-ok, often snarky-prose, he has lamented the decline of genuine intellectuals, exposed the pretenses of academia, and challenged pieties on both the right and left, while all the time refusing to give up on utopian ideals. Gathering his scattershot efforts into one resounding blast of critical energy, Intellectuals in Politics and Academia is easy to argue with, but hard to put down". -Martin Jay Ehrman, Professor of European History Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley, USA "Russell Jacoby is one of America's very finest essayists and this collection shows his masterly combination of style and substance. His illuminating investigations of leading thinkers and his biting critique of academic conceits are alone worth the price of the book. Its range is exceptional and, as always, Jacoby shows respect for the utopian imagination and those intellectuals who defend it. These essays are provocative and, just as important, a great read. Don't miss this book!" -Stephen Eric Bronner, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Comparative Literature, and German Studies, Rutgers University, USA This book addresses the fate of intellectuals in modern culture and politics. Russell Jacoby's seminal The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe (1987, 2000) introduced the term "public intellectual" and gave rise to heated controversy. Here Jacoby assesses contemporary public intellectuals, their profound failings and limited achievements. The book includes biting appraisals of well-known intellectuals, such as Noam Chomsky, Hannah Arendt, and Bernard-Henri Lévy, as well as interventions on violence, utopia and multiculturalism. Russell Jacoby is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, USA, and the author of the author of nine books, including Repression of Psychoanalysis (1983), Bloodlust (2011), and most recently On Diversity (2020).

Author : Matthew Feldman
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9783838269863
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.61/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Politics, Intellectuals, and Faith written by Matthew Feldman and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This wide-ranging collection of essays examines modern intellectuals and ideologues. Matthew Feldman calls attention to the substantial role played in post-Great War Europe and the United States by religions--both familiar monotheisms like Christianity and secular 'political faiths'--over the last century of upheaval.

Author : Sven Eliaeson
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1443807176
Total Pages : 315 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Academics as Public Intellectuals written by Sven Eliaeson and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-03-26 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As public intellectuals academics formulate specialized knowledge to become understandable and relevant for people outside of the specialty. There are two main forms of such intellectual activity: dissemination and debating. Scientific knowledge is a cultural value in its own right and also of importance in public discourse. Due to the complexity of the challenges facing modern societies the intellectual role of individual academics and scholarly institutions is increasingly important with mass education and new media techniques expanding the public sphere. It has become more important that specialists popularize also for specialists in other fields. Challenges such as climate change or social integration requires knowledgeable citizens and broad public discourses integrating specialized knowledge from several disciplines. Contemporary challenges in Western Europe, Scandinavia and the US are discussed. The historical perspectives are followed back to early Modernity. The cases include contributions on Holberg, the Myrdals and Boas. There are contributions on the recent transformations “East of the Elbe” and the challenges facing scholars in Turkey and India. The main focus of the book is on social scientists but the issues discussed are of general interest for all kinds of academics and for people interested in the cultural and political relevance of science.

Author : Bruce Robbins
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 : 9780816618316
Total Pages : 408 pages
Book Rating : 4.13/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Intellectuals written by Bruce Robbins and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A valuable counter to the Reagan-Bush-Bennett-Bloom backlash, these essays (by many of the usual left suspects--Aronowitz, Said, Ehrenreich, et al.) analyze and evaluate the situatedness of intellectuals with respect to the media, government bureaucracy, the university, and the Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Author : Colette Cann
Publisher : Myers Education Press
ISBN 13 : 1975501411
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.19/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Activist Academic written by Colette Cann and published by Myers Education Press. This book was released on 2020-05-29 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Donald Trump’s election forced academics to confront the inadequacy of promoting social change through the traditional academic work of research, writing, and teaching. Scholars joined crowds of people who flooded the streets to protest the event. The present political moment recalls intellectual forbearers like Antonio Gramsci who, imprisoned during an earlier fascist era, demanded that intellectuals committed to justice “can no longer consist in eloquence ... but in active participation in practical life, as constructor, organizer, ‘permanent persuader’ and not just a simple orator" (Gramsci, 1971, p. 10). Indeed, in an era of corporate media and “alternative facts,” academics committed to justice cannot simply rely on disseminating new knowledge, but must step out of the ivory tower and enter the streets as activists. The Activist Academic serves as a guide for merging activism into academia. Following the journey of two academics, the book offers stories, frameworks and methods for how scholars can marry their academic selves, involved in scholarship, teaching and service, with their activist commitments to justice, while navigating the lived realities of raising families and navigating office politics. This volume invites academics across disciplines to enter into a dialogue about how to take knowledge to the streets. Perfect for courses such as: Introduction to Social Theory | Social Foundations | Certificate in Public Scholarship | Practicing Public Scholarship | Reimagining Public Engagement | Decentering the Public Humanities hrClick HERE to see a video of the book launch, moderated by Monisha Bajaj for Imagining America, with contributions from Margo Okazawa-Rey and John Saltmarsh. hrWatch the #CompactNationPod interview, which runs between minutes 9:35 and 48:45. In this episode, Marisol Morales chats with Colette Cann and Eric DeMeulenaere, as they share the true stories of their lives as activists, scholars, and parents who are trying to push forward social change through academic work.Compact Nation Podcast · The Activist Academic hr What does it mean to be both an activist and an academic? Watch the FreshEd podcast Becoming an Activist Academic, which features authors Colette Cann & Eric DeMeulenaere discussing their own journeys as a guide for merging activism and academia. hr

Author : Russell Jacoby
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.38/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Last Intellectuals written by Russell Jacoby and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Stanley Aronowitz
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231509502
Total Pages : 427 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Taking It Big written by Stanley Aronowitz and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-10 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) was a pathbreaking intellectual who transformed the independent American Left in the 1940s and 1950s. Often challenging the established ideologies and approaches of fellow leftist thinkers, Mills was central to creating and developing the idea of the "public intellectual" in postwar America and laid the political foundations for the rise of the New Left in the 1960s. Written by Stanley Aronowitz, a leading sociologist and critic of American culture and politics, Taking It Big reconstructs this icon's formation and the new dimension of American political life that followed his work. Aronowitz revisits Mills's education and its role in shaping his outlook and intellectual restlessness. Mills defined himself as a maverick, and Aronowitz tests this claim (which has been challenged in recent years) against the work and thought of his contemporaries. Aronowitz describes Mills's growing circle of contacts among the New York Intellectuals and his efforts to reenergize the Left by encouraging a fundamentally new theoretical orientation centered on more ambitious critiques of U.S. society. Blurring the rigid boundaries among philosophy, history, and social theory and between traditional orthodoxies and the radical imagination, Mills became one of the most admired and controversial thinkers of his time and was instrumental in inspiring the student and antiwar movements of the 1960s. In this book, Aronowitz not only reclaims this critical thinker's reputation but also emphasizes his ongoing significance to debates on power in American democracy.

Author : Ian MacLean
Publisher : CUP Archive
ISBN 13 : 9780521398596
Total Pages : 340 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Political Responsibility of Intellectuals written by Ian MacLean and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1990-12-13 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addresses the many problems in defining the relationship of intellectuals to the society in which they live. The contributors come from a wide variety of disciplines, and are drawn from both America and Eastern and Western Europe.