it is ironic because you are using it as an example of a noted intellectual supposedly making anti-intellectual arguments. I’ve read tons of Buckley and subscribed to NR for years when he was editing it, and he was in no way an anti-intellectual. Since you clearly haven’t read the book, it is not surprising that you don’t have a clue on what it is about. It is not an anti-intellectual attack on Yale, it is a religious intellectual attacking what he saw as secular intellectuals. The date is important because 1950 seems rather early for the “you professors are damn atheists” arguments. I wouldn’t be surprised if chapel weren’t required back then.
Further, Sokal’s hoax was hardly an anti-intellectual one. It was one type of intellectual attacking another. I’m on Sokal’s side too, btw.
Wesley Clark, yes, you are right that intellectuals are often academics and that academics are therefore often among the repressed, reviled, or ignored (depending on what kind of “anti-intellectualism” we’re talking about it, including where and when).
Voyager, I’m not 100% sure what you mean when you say that you’re on Sokal’s side. That is, it would be rather hard to defend the deliberately BS article that Sokal wrote or to defend the acceptance of it at *Social Text[i/]. Hence, I’m not exactly on the opposing side, though I feel no great love or admiration for Sokal.
I could, if you wish, try to dig out the thread on academic peer review to which I referred above in which, IIRC, I posted at some length about what had occurred, why I thought it had occurred, and how the influence of postmodernism has waned since the 90s. (I should add that the waning of the latter isn’t purely because of the Sokal hoax which proved very little about the merits of postmodernism one way or another but merely established the willingness–at that time–of two editors to publish something submitted to them by a well-known scientist and liberal which they lacked the expertise to evaluate themselves without sending it to some other scholar in the appropriate field.)
This is kind of ironic advice. This is a formal warning: personal insults aren’t allowed in this forum.
So are we allowed to hint at insults but not give them directly?
As an example, if someone says ‘only an idiot would believe ABC’, is that ok but saying ‘XYZ is an idiot’ is a punishable offense?
It’s better to say ‘ABC is an idiotic belief’ and explain why rather than attacking another person’s intelligence. ITR Champion did make some comments about you but I didn’t think they crossed over into being insults.
His whole post was an implication that I am an idiot. So I responded by insulting him. I’m not looking to get ITR in trouble, I’m just confused by the rules.
If I had responded to his implied insults with implied insults of my own (rather than direct ones), something like “I really wish some people’s mothers hadn’t been incompetent when it came to teaching manners” or something like that, would that be ok?
This debate over insults is more fun than the original debate about intellectualism.
The problem is, most people don’t see a difference. If a sociological theory can be debunked, well then, why not physics, chemistry, or most popularly, biology? They probably see “research” as a bunch of egg-heads in lab coats wandering around coming up with wacky ideas and publishing them. They don’t see a difference between arguing the validity of Freud’s interpretation of dreams and the validity of biological evolution.
Conservatives in general tend to be anti-intellectual since intellectuals tend to be progressive, but it’s more complicated than that. There are cultural intellectuals, ones who are well-versed in philosophy, history, and literature. Then there are scientific intellectuals, ones who are well-versed in hard sciences. They are not the same type of people and may be at odds with one another. This dates back a long time. For example Mary Shelley was most likely a cultural intellectual, the type who would go to gatherings of other writers and have in-depth discussions, but wrote a classic novel that is fervently anti-science. I’m sure there are also examples of a scientific intellectual showing disdain for those well-versed in the humanities.
For some reason, though, the two types of intellectuals are usually seen differently. An average person would see a cultural intellectual as an obnoxious blow-hard, but a scientific intellectual as dangerous, hence the cultural archetype of the mad scientist.
No. And with that, I’m going to recommend you take any other questions to ATMB.
Agreed.
Sure, scientific intellectuals may sometimes be at odds with cultural intellectuals–and the distinction is a good one. But in most universities at least, it’s more the case that the lives of those in the sciences and those in the humanities are quite different and there can be cluelessness about research needs, working conditions, teaching requirements, tenure criteria–quite apart from purely intellectual matters (over which the opportunity for common ground is the greatest, IMO).
One giant demurral; in what way is Frankenstein anti-science? That is hardly the point of it. It is anti-Promethean but it isn’t at all anti-science (in my view).
Undoubtedly though “disdain” is a very strong word; usually it’s more like “So what do you do over there?” With the occasional amusing remark like when an engineering researcher is invited to a speak at a cross-disciplinary humanities event and opens up with the following: “You sure do have a lot of good looking people on this side of campus.”
Sometimes and sometimes.
Cultural intellectuals can work (hard) against the blowhard stereotype. And researchers in the sciences–intellectuals or not–are often revered by the public as the proverbial rocket scientists.
When did I ever do that? I have been abundantly clear that I am not defending anti-intellectualism. What I’ve said, and what I used Buckley’s book for, was to suggest that Wesley Clark should get his definitions clear and should cite better sources than Wikipedia, which is good advice for anyone, but especially for someone who wants to pound others for anti-intellectualism. (The Wikipedia article about anti-intellectualism is a perfect example of the low standards that prevail on Wikipedia.)
I freely admit that I don’t keep track up the latest developments in literary theory or other, related fields, and I’ll readily accept your description of recent trends. Even so, I still think that the behavior of many academics is a factor in the attitude of many people towards academia for several reasons. First, there’s postmodernism and then there’s postmodernism. Even if the professors are no longer citing Foucault and Baudelaire five times a page, the basic philosophical tenets that underlie postmodernism are still running around to some degree. Second, people can have long memories. Most people’s opinions about the academic world were shaped while they were in that world, roughly age 18 to 22 for an typical person. After that, they carry the observations they made with them for the rest of their life, in some cases without much need or desire to update them, so silliness that occurred in the 90’s can still be shaping opinions.
Lastly, of course, there still is silliness occurring, such as the art hoax at Yale last year. Such things may get much more publicity than they deserve, but if we’re debating why some people are so suspicious of academia, the main fact is that they do get publicity.
Okay ITR but what really does the Yale art hoax come down to in terms of evaluating the faculty at Yale or even the overall intellectual climate of the campus? Surely you realize that student newspapers are edited by undergraduate students–not by faculty. And while some professor somewhere at Yale may have given the thumbs up to this senior project it’s hard to tell from the link you’ve provided. That is, what did the professor know about the details of this project? There may be something culpable or at least some exercising of poor judgment about the professor’s relation to this project; or there may not. But I don’t see any kind of “silliness” that you might liken to editors of Social Text having published an essay by a reputed physicist simply because they trusted he was in earnest. All we know is that an undergraduate student seems to have hoaxed her peers editing the school paper about the contents of her senior project.
Of course, if your point is simply that there’s bad press on the academy then fine. But you seem to be of the mind that a lot of the bad press is justifiable or at least that were the academy less “silly” there wouldn’t be so much of it.
By the way, plenty of people still cite Foucault–that is, plenty of humanities scholars who are interested in poststructuralist philosophy cite him. But as I’m fairly certain I said in the original thread, there’s nothing bogus or uninteresting, or intellectual nugatory about reading Michel Foucault (and some of his lectures are still in the process of being translated into English for non-French speaking readers). You should not assume, in other words, that anyone who reads or cites Foucault is a reductive or reflexive postmodernist–or even any kind of postmodernist. If you were a philosopher would you want to be ignorant of one of the most important philosophers of the late twentieth century?
P.S., ITR, I forgot to say that when you wrote:
you probably meant someone other than Baudelaire. Though Baudelaire was a groundbreaking mid-nineteenth-century poet who influenced a lot of modernists he was not a postmodernist by anyone’s definition.
Perhaps you meant Baudrillard? If so, you may be pleased to know that he hasn’t held up quite as well as Foucault. Though I personally still find his insights worth thinking about, I suspect Baudrillard will be remembered most for his influence on The Matrix ;).
I’m kinda left of center and I am pretty sure I believe in rational economic theories. Or were you talking about the freaky deaky left wingers?
Huh? Liberals understand comparative advantage. Introduce borrowing and new trade theory (I think that’s what Krugman won the nobel for) into your model and see if you still think the concensus is airtight. I think protectionism is bad for everyone but unfettered free trade especially if it is only practiced by one party is probably good for China and bad for Ohio.
Cite please.
I think liberals have a problem with free market fundamentalism, not really something that Krugman buys into. I always had a much bigger problem with people who threw around names like Friedman and Hayek without really buying into their ideas more than had any problems I ever had with Friedman and Hayek.
The things you seem to think liberals have problems with are basic micro and macro econ, this is not the distinguishing factor between mainstream economists and Friedman. It not that liberals don’t believe that free markets are good, its that we believe the markets should be harnessed to help people instead of the other way around.
The vastly different countries the OP gave in the first post seems to point to an entirely different basis on which anti-intellectualism is founded. It seems like people hate intellectualism when it goes against what they believe in and love it when it supports something they support. Conservatives don’t hate intellectuals, they hold up guys like William F. Buckley and Charles Krauthammer as great thinkers and intellectuals. They think Rush Limbaugh is smart. They clearly don’t have anything against brains. They’re just mad that most intelligent people like ones in universities and ones doing work on science disagree with them about things.
If the elite colleges and scientists ever swing conservative again, look for them to be held up in reverence once more.
No, it isn’t. Check out Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism, by Ha-Joon Chang.
ITR champion, I am not a defender of Wikipedia. (A gentleman that I know was deliberately libled in the extreme on their website and it was not handled at all well by Wiki.)
But could you be specific about what Wesley Clark quoted from Wikipedia that was in error? Most professors that I know will allow it as a beginning research tool although not as a final source or authority. I think your attack is a little overboard.
Clinton was both a Rhodes Scholar and a genuine Southern Bubba. The two are not exclusive of each other. That is the way some Rhodes Scholars talk.
There is so much ignorant prejudice against Southern dialects that many people in broadcasting intentionally change their dialects rather than cope with the ridicule. Among them were Edward R. Murrow and Stephen Colbert.
Der Trihs, I’ve been part of the women’s movement for about 38 years now and I have never known any feminists like the ones you describe who were or are anti-math for women or who describe certain characteristics as feminine and other characteristics as masculine. You may find some who describe certain characteristics as being traditionally feminine. That is an entirely different thing.
Sorry if this was already mentioned, but I didn’t read the intervening posts.
If you hang out at a liberal blog or board for a while, it becomes clear why conservatives hate liberals: liberals want to control your life. Liberals don’t want you to smoke, eat fatty foods, or take out the trash in a single bag. And then, liberals won’t hesitate to explain to you, in mind-numbing detail, why you are absolutely, totally, and completely wrong, and then give you hundreds of links proving it. (I’m going to love seeing the responses on this one!)
What is funny too is that within the liberal camp, they can’t agree. You should see the in-fighting just before the Democratic primaries.
While conservatives march blindly in lockstep with Rush and Coulter, at least they’re united. Liberals can’t agree on anything.
This is exactly why I’m a liberal: I’m smart enough to realize no one person has a lock on the (capital T) Truth. I’m smart enough to think for myself. I’ll take that over blind unity any day.