Truth to Power: Public Intellectuals In and Out of Academe

The notion that public intellectuals in the US are in decline has again become fashionable with their portrayal as trapped between Academe and the real world. The questions addressed by this volume are: How can the voices of scholars and erudite thinkers penetrate the globalized, corporate media and how does media receive and represent the contribution of intellectuals to the academic and public spheres, all the while recognizing what Paul Bove calls the the nonidentity of intellectuals as a group. Dedicated to the memory of Howard Zinn, whose life work is a model for intellectual engagement, this collection of intriguing articles with an introduction by the editors and a foreword by Henry A. Giroux presents new scholarship on the role of the intellectual in a society, and specifically in Academe, from many different perspectives. Indeed, intellectuals have been negotiating access to public discourse for centuries, but never have their opinions been more crucial to the public good, because of the privately owned media’s domination of public discourse. The inspiration for this volume comes also from Edward Said’s notion of intellectuals whose role is to uncover and elucidate the contest, to challenge and defeat both an imposed silence and the normalized quiet of unseen power, wherever and whenever possible.