ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM? Matt Welch weighs in on a Boston Phoenix column by Michael Bronski complaining that some prominent public intellectuals aren't getting any respect. Welch sees a glass half-full: "Still, when you do so loudly, and people respond with vigorous counter-arguments, seems to me that’s a golden opportunity for a debate, rather than another excuse to claim censorship, intolerance, or anti-intellectualism." Bronski sees a glass half-empty: "The attacks on Sontag, Chomsky, and Vidal are singular in their viciousness and intensity. This is not only because of what the three commentators say — most of which reflect already-stated positions, and which largely fall firmly within the long tradition of American critical political commentary — but because of their positions as public intellectuals. The attacks on them are not simply, as some have claimed, the panic reaction of a culture that has been deeply shaken by unexpected events in geopolitics, but the full flowering of a strain of anti-intellectualism intrinsic to US culture. What we are witnessing here is a full assault on the dwindling structures of intellectualism — both academic and public — in American life." Bronski, quoting Vidal, diagnoses the problem thus: "No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity — much less dissent." Huh? Perhaps it's Bronski's network of public intellectuals that has eliminated objectivity and dissent -- see here, or survey the job offerings in the Chronicle of Higher Education -- researchers not seeking the multiple oppressions of race, class, and gender often need not apply.

Welch provides links to a more diverse population of public intellectuals than Bronski does.