DON'T GIVE UP ON THE UNIVERSITIES.

So urges Reason's Ira Stoll, recalling two public intellectuals who had academic posts.

If politicians do see any value in academia it tends to be as high-tech incubators, with laboratories spawning computer-science or biotech startups. Humanities and social sciences are derided. Senator Marco Rubio campaigned for president in 2016 by denouncing philosophy majors. Even President Barack Obama had to apologize in 2014 after questioning the value of art history degrees. Students are increasingly avoiding history and English and instead choosing statistics, computer science, engineering, or applied mathematics.

Conservatives complain that today's universities aren't producing scholars like [Richard] Pipes or [Bernard] Lewis, or that those who do manage to get doctorates wind up working at magazines or think tanks instead of finding tenure-track academic jobs at prestigious institutions. If so, the examples of Lewis and Pipes make the case for engagement, rather than writing off academia altogether.

Even presidents and prime ministers who win elections based partly on popular reactions against coastal elites, after all, need ideas and staff. One of President Trump's foreign policy aides, Fiona Hill, is a former student of Pipes. President Trump's secretary of state, Michael Pompeo, tweeted, "Bernard Lewis was a true scholar & great man. I owe a great deal of my understanding of the Middle East to his work. He was a man who believed, as I do, that Americans must be more confident in the greatness of our country, not less." Vice President Cheney made a special trip to Philadelphia in 2006 to celebrate the 90th birthday of Lewis.

That second paragraph suggests the engagement has to be both ways: are the think-tanks hiring second- or third-rate scholars, or are the academic departments encouraging self-selection?