Johannes Vermeer, Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid (detail), c. 1670. Wikimedia Commons.
Erin Corber
In the introduction to his 1993 Reith lectures, Edward Said reflects on the role and representations of the intellectual. Taking Gramsci’s inclusive vision of a broad and expansive intellectual class populated increasingly not only by producers but also by distributors of knowledge, Said argues that the intellectual’s role in society “cannot be reduced simply to being a faceless profession,” but rather, that they possess the tools and training to present ideas, messages, and truths to a public. This role is risky, he points out. An intellectual must be prepared not only to confront? fortified barriers, but also to make personal enemies when they stand up publicly. Yet the task is an important one, as the intellectual’s public role is motivated, Said argues, by a commitment to truth. There are universal standards and principles that protect human beings’ rights to “decent standards of behavior concerning freedom and justice from worldly powers or nations,” he points out, violations against which “need to be fought against courageously.”[1]
In an era in which “fake” and “alternative” revisionist truths and falsehoods proliferate in public discourse, Said’s argument is more relevant than ever. As scholars, and intellectuals, the responsibility for representing truths may seem like a no-brainer to historians. Yet public history and what John Tosh has labeled “practical historicism,” or “applied history” in policy-making still largely remains in a category separate from the academy.[2] We teach our students to be critical thinkers and engaged citizens, but are in danger of failing to engage effectively in public conversations.
We face danger from multiple fronts. First, from persistent assumptions held within the academy that somehow critical distance and objectivity are anathema to engagement and politics: that historians somehow stand “outside” of history, and that “relevance” means “bending one’s research to the fickle fashions of the day and by extension the dereliction of one’s primary obligation to scholarly objectivity.”[3] Aside from this are the practical professional concerns: junior scholars’ vulnerability on an uncertain academic job market, faculty’s increasing helplessness in universities where tenure revocation has become more than anecdotal, and a creeping general climate of distrust of specialists and academics that makes public voices – especially those most marginal and marginalized – easy targets for both cyber and real-life violence. Standing up and speaking out can have real consequences for an intellectual’s career and life. Yet, as Said reminds us, this has, to an extent, always been the case.
Scholars’ voices can be made to be heard in a number of ways. Continue reading →
