The public intellectual role is inseparable from politics, power, and ethics

Evidence

The debate over the public intellectual cannot be abstracted from a broader discourse regarding the centrality of racial justice within democratic public life. Nor can such a debate ignore how public intellectuals address the primacy of the pedagogical in providing the conditions for audiences to reconceptualize their role as active and critical citizens in shaping history and mapping the political dimensions of their economic, social, and cultural lives. The role of the public intellectual is inextricably related with mechanisms of power, politics, and ethics. Recognizing this connection offers no relief for those who deny the relevance of politics in the university, just as it demands more from those academics who reduce their role to that of the apolitical technician or neutral guardian of Western high culture. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2680

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Power includes the ability to define contexts of public life — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 159; Legal practice is a public profession affecting national policy — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 899