Abstract
At least as far back as the philosopher kings of Plato’s Republic, public intellectuals played an instrumental role in the affairs of their respective communities. Presidents who led America’s research universities in the early to mid-twentieth century were just as comfortable in the public square as they were in the library, the laboratory, or the lecture hall. A variety of forces (a more volatile public, the rewarding of specialized research, growing campus bureaucracies, etc.) began to converge in the mid-1960s, casting doubt over the future viability of the public intellectual. On one level, the advent of social media in the 2000s offered public intellectuals new platforms from which they could make their contributions. On another level, social media’s relative youth as a communication medium comes with incalculable risks. Regardless, the complex nature of the social problems facing society today demand that informed voices play a role in the present range of debates. Many colleges and universities are thus exploring ways to cultivate, assess, evaluate, and reward the scholarship their intellectuals are generating on behalf of the public.
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Ream, T.C., Devers, C.J., Pattengale, J., Drummy, E. (2019). The Promise and Peril of the Public Intellectual. In: Paulsen, M.B., Perna, L.W. (eds) Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research. Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, vol 34. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03457-3_6
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