Is the public intellectual a thing of the past? What do I think of Cornel West?

Yesterday, Dorian Warren had me, Johns Hopkins political scientist Lester Spence, and New Republic editor Jamil Smith on Dorian’s MSNBC show, Nerding Out, to discuss public intellectuals, black politics, and Michael Eric Dyson’s recent critique of Cornel West in The New Republic, which has attracted a lot of attention on social media. I was brought onto the show in the third segment to talk more generally about public intellectuals, whether they were a thing of the past or not, but I did briefly share my own thoughts about Cornel West and his contributions to the culture.

Here is the entire show, in three segments; as I said, I appear in the third.

 

10 Comments

  1. gvgray April 23, 2015 at 1:27 pm | #

    i skimmed dyson’s hit piece on cornel west. it read like a people magazine piece for eggheads. what’s this about west not lauding obama for his achievement as a man of color. should we laud hitler for his achievement as an aryan in spite of the downside?

  2. John T. Maher April 23, 2015 at 1:33 pm | #

    West’s primary contribution is as a teacher? I respectfully same that is almost a case of viewing Dr. West trough the bounded rationality of seeing him as one’s thesis advisor. I good friend had Angela Davis as her thesis advisor but would never say that Davis’ primary contribution to American political thought is as a teacher. Many of us see West’s work as a writer and an activist as inseparable from his teaching so in the meta sense you are correct, but his message is to teach us all in accessible terms to think in terms of analyzing and destabilizing the structural means of the dispositifs of power.Dyson’s article has been widely pilloried in the press and for just cause.One can also see this in the sort or terrible documentary An Examined Life where West was the only one aside from Judith Butler who has anything interesting to say and it was not about teaching.

  3. tom April 23, 2015 at 1:51 pm | #

    I heard Cornel West on the Letterman show. Definitely qualifies as public, and the subject matter I think would qualify the appearance as that of a public intellectual. Certainly public intellectuals are not a thing of the past, but as with all things involving mass culture, finding an audience is not easy, and for the public to distinguish public intellectuals from PR campaigns is not always easy.

  4. Lisa April 23, 2015 at 2:47 pm | #

    I am fundamentally suspicious when a scholar/teacher’s level of “productivity” comes under fire. The single context where “measuring productivity” seems warranted is in reviewing the contractual requirements for tenure (why I think this is a longer story that I will not address here, having to do with being employed at an institution where there is no publication requirement for tenure, and this is a total disaster). It is specious when, among colleagues, conversation turns to belittling the myriad of achievements another colleague makes in her/his career beyond publication, because they, the sniggering colleagues, have utterly internalized the “new normal” publish or perish mentality that reeks of an anti-intellectual, corporate ideology, peddled by so many of our institutions of higher ed. It is obnoxious and precocious when greener graduate students poo-poo their seniors, for oedipal reasons, out of terror for their own prospects, or to satisfy their egos, feeding on the belief of a non-existent meritocratic system in which you win if you are the best and the brightest, so keep striving baby. We know it is laughable on the right, in legislative discussion; the profession is dying (or being murdered) and academics are attacked simultaneously for lack of scholarly productivity and for not teaching 8 courses a semester; We know in these arenas, neither activity has real meaning when thinking itself, the intellectual pursuit itself, has no market value, when colleges and university are owned by boards or governors who refuse to underwrite the learning and engagement aspect of “education” or make disingenuous arguments about some tenured prof caught mowing their lawn on a Wednesday morning, so yeah, what are we paying them for exactly? So we acknowledge that THAT conversation is ridiculous, why do we carry on our own? It is not just that Cornel is a great teacher, that he has “shaped generations of students” (and I agree, wholly; there are a ton of great teachers, and there is are some that rise above, and CW is one; I was also very moved by one grad school compatriot Elliot Ratzman’s recent defense of CW’s role as a mentor). But when we arrive at the place where we, as academics, feel compelled to rush to that defense, because of some insinuation that there is a lack or a failure elsewhere that for which we must account, I feel we all lose. This is from the outset the wrong model, the wrong conversation, a conversation framed by an insidious suspicion that there is ALWAYS ALREADY deficit, waste, excess in the academy per se. I had a dissertation advisor who, having written a seminal book in our field at a young age, spent a long time working on the next project. I remember being at conferences and enduring the shittalk, and remember responding each time, but, BUT, he is an amazing teacher. At a distance of age and experience, I wish I could go back in time and rather than respond with what felt even then like a weak-hand argument (since we are already operating in a system where teaching is devalued from the inside as well as from the outside) I could respond, in the most persuasive and intelligent sounding way possible: but, BUT, go f• yourself. Does this make sense?

    • Michael April 24, 2015 at 12:13 am | #

      Such a great response. Thank you, Lisa.

  5. Glenn April 23, 2015 at 3:04 pm | #

    Cornel West is a intellectual in a very public way.

    Being an intellectual is not synonymous with being extensively published.

    The language of the learned was once Latin, and was not accessible to the vulgar, meaning the learned could communicate most effectively among themselves, this being the antithesis of the public intellectual. This is analogous to the question of whether the tree falling in the forest makes a sound if no one is present to hear it.

    Cornel West, in the best tradition of philosophy, elicits and engages the intellectual capacity of his public in a way that today’s instantiations of the spirit of the nearly extinct Latin speaking and writing intellectuals, will never approach.

    Philosophy is the love of learning what “is”. What “is” is hidden by illusion. To see what is, one must be willing to bear the pain of being disillusioned. And the taunts of those who cling to and deny the real for the security of illusion.

  6. Hank April 23, 2015 at 6:01 pm | #

    Is the public intellectual a thing of the past?

    Only as a paying position!

  7. Mushin April 24, 2015 at 9:45 am | #

    I read the article and enjoyed all these comments in this triadic appreciative conversation with strangers.

    “Philosophy is the love of learning what “is”. What “is” is hidden by illusion. To see what is, one must be willing to bear the pain of being disillusioned. And the taunts of those who cling to and deny the real for the security of illusion.”

    Remarkable comment reflecting on the fact that lived world experiences are far beyond professors, bankers, politicians and business MBA Bean Counters (all belonging to the 100 year old priesthood of advertisers in mass marketing media in Magazines, Radio, TV, and now the Internet Cartel of Comcast, AT&T and Verizon “Informational Cookie Industry of Big Passive Data” where “Normal” is literally disappearing in becoming weird for a real change.

    I especially enjoyed “the sniggering colleagues, have utterly internalized the “new normal” publish or perish mentality that reeks of an anti-intellectual, corporate ideology, peddled by so many of our institutions of higher ed. It is obnoxious and precocious when greener graduate students poo-poo their seniors, for oedipal reasons, out of terror for their own prospects, or to satisfy their egos, feeding on the belief of a non-existent meritocratic system in which you win if you are the best and the brightest, so keep striving baby. We know it is laughable on the right, in legislative discussion; the profession is dying (or being murdered) and academics are attacked simultaneously for lack of scholarly productivity…”

    As one professor friend who is a great mentor in my life said “I use to be a prostitute now I am a whore giving it away for free.”

    My attention as a non-academic thank goodness is primarily engaging with real lived world experience not barfing dogs ontological arguments justifying the beast of regulatory capture rent control in governance of everything in postmodern globalization. This is a mess, chaotic, disorder, confusion, distrust and beautiful awakening. I dig Cornell West and have never voted for Obama. I don’t collapse domains of conversations in regards functional structural operational processes in historic real-time pure-play. When Obama voted on the Patriot Act granting AT&T immunity in the Senate in 2008 I was livd based in the predatory chaos happening in FCC Cartel based in this notion that “Information is Public” and this makes Nixon’s Watergate look like a Choir of Saints, and we end up in a information and the Federal COMMUNICATION Commission is now pandering to a Cartel based on the claim that the Internet is an “INFORMATIONAL HIGHWAY FOR ALICE IN WONDERLAND” and there is no justice, no customer satisfaction, and no human privacy. The content of your human existence belongs to autocratic corporate global plutocracies counting beans and offering eternal debt for generations to come. I say ki$$ my a$$ and want no part of it. The issue isn’t this sniggering going on everywhere and in everything. It is a waste of attention to even converse in it.

    We human beings already know ecologically that there are “NO SHORT CUTS” in our lived world experience. We are living on the edge, West and Obama are two edge walkers and our identities are created by keeping promises in communities of value coordinating human actions, trusting triadic dialogs, robosticity in building the creative processes as enterprises, and ultimately opening conversations of possible possibilities for a third wave renaissance as edge walker’s in a new unity bundle dignifying equality in natural law and mutual co-existence in real-time pure-play lived world experience. This is an opportunity to put skin in the game of jeopardy as generous artists inventing a new day. Let’s get real here, at the start of the climb from the bottomless pit of human despair where we are nothing is going to be perfect and there is no savior other than oneself. The meanness in human discourse is pathetic and as a man entering the public discourse I refuse to participate in it and I don’t care if your president or the pope. Herd rule, group think, higher ed stinks to all heaven and my deliberate intention is getting children by age 12 years old providing solutions. Expecting anyone contaminated in this insane historic drift to be a genius and creatively solve their future is like expecting people in the Holocaust become chef’s in the kitchen creating gourmet meals.

    Enough ranting let me get back to playing on the edge with the few people in my circle of influence that get’s the big picture in Plato’s Illusory Cave of shadows. Maybe building a fire in the wilderness together can ignite the light and the caterpillars become butterflies overnight. I pray so, it appears like the perfect storm to do so!

  8. Neal April 24, 2015 at 2:01 pm | #

    I really enjoyed that segment. It was a well thought out debate that confirms a few thoughts I’ve had about Dr. West for some time now. Though I recognize he’s an activist at heart and recall reading somewhere that being an ivory tower academic was never his aspiration, that’d no excuse to ignore his academic duty. You can do both!

    Throughout American history, intellectuals have played both public thinker and private teacher. Richard Hofstadter, John Hope Franklin, E. Franklin Frazier, Allyn Locke, Reinhold Neibur are a few examples just off the top of my head. I’m not understanding why Dr. West should be any different.

    Just imagine the books he could have written!!! The ideas we could have been grappling with today had West disciplined himself to write them down rather than strut from stage to stage for a fee. I say that having met Dr. West’s brother when I lived in California and heard Doc speak publicly. He’s a dynamic speaker and very erudite. But I was looking forward to clearing a shelf for said books but that will not happen, I suppose.

    In any event, thanks for posting the segment. It felt good as a black man to see a great conversation being led by fellow brothers. It was nice.

  9. Thomas Leo Dumm April 24, 2015 at 3:39 pm | #

    Cornel West is now, and has been always, a committed public intellectual and original scholar of the first rank. Anyone who tries to enter our degraded public sphere these days risks scorn and mockery, and he has endured more than his share. Folk like Dyson and Harris-Perry plays their media cards more carefully than he does — that is all I can tell marl
    ks the difference. Cornel has always been true,in my experience, regardless of risk to his status.

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