Symposium: The Professionalization of Intellectuals

THE EDITORS Symposium: The Professionalization of Intellectuals It is with pleasure that we publish the responses to our recent letter, published in volume 58, number 2, on the professionalization of intellectuals. For readers who missed the issue in which the letter appeared, it is reprinted below, but we do not plan to attempt here any overview of the responses. Readers of urQ may judge for themselves whether there are in the responses serious disagreements, common themes, etc. Editorial caution may be also be in order because of the criticism our letter received from several contributors. Indeed, a reader in Ottawa objected to our view that the 'majority of intellectuals are in the universities. Ithink that the statement is too sweeping. There is no way of making an accurate count, but in other walks of life there are many who can rightly be classed as intellectuals. For example, there are many in the legal profession, notably among appellate court judges, among the clergy, in many branches of the civil services, on the staff of the National Research Council, and in fact, in the research departments of manufacturing and commercial companies.' We are sure that this reader (who also faults urQ for publishing excessively specialized articles) is correct in this list, although we suspect, still, that the 'majority' ofintellectuals are in the universities. If further responses to the published letter suggest that readers have found the topic of interest, we hope to do a supplementalissue in the next volume of the journal. We regret that we received no responses from women to whom we wrote or from French Canada. A Letter on Professionalization The letter printed below has been sent to a number of people, and we take this opportunity to invite readers of UTQ who may be interested in the topic it raises to respond. There has been some criticism in the United States recently ofwhat might be called the 'professionalization of the intellectuals.' The critics (they include Gerald Graff, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Leslie Fiedler, Russell Jacoby, and others) complain that intellectuals are sealing themselves off UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 58, NUMBER 4, SUMMER 1989 440 EDITORS from the educated public outside the universities, with literary critics, economists, historians, philosophers, and sociologists increasingly writing for fellow professionals in sub-fields (themselves increasingly narrow ) of their disciplines. In The Last Intellectuals (1987), Russell Jacoby writes that Younger intellectuals no longer need or want a larger public; they are almost exclusively professors. Campuses are their homes; colleagues their audience; monographs and specialized journals their media. Unlike past intellectuals they situate themselves within fields and disciplines.... Their jobs, advancement , and salaries depend on the evaluation of specialists, and this dependence affects the issues broached and the language employed. For some of these critics, a recurring point of comparative reference is the period before about 1960-5, prior to the 'socialization' into academic life of a large cohort of graduate students who now comprise a large part of the professoriat. Although this generation may have become 'radical' or 'feminist' twenty years ago, the objection is that the conditions of its members' professional lives define their writing, what they consider to be their audiences, and the ways in which they think about art, ideas, and society. We realize not only that there is some presumption in identifying oneself as an 'intellectual' but that the word itself is difficult to define. It cannot, of course, be restricted to university professors, and among the latter it cannot be restricted to those who work in the humanities and social sciences. We assume only that the majority ofintellectuals are in the universities. As for disciplinary affiliation, it is clear that the history of the humanities and social sciences cannot be restricted to a history of the university. Experience suggests, however, that these disciplines remain the traditional - certainly not the exclusive - homes of the intellectuals. In that allegedly pre-professional time, it is sometimes argued that there existed more of what might be called a 'public culture' (not to be confused with a 'popularized culture'). Intellectuals like Edmund Wilson, George Orwell, George Woodcock, and others wrote for the educated public in a prose honed by their experience of writing in magazines...