Patrick Parr is Professor of English at Lakeland University Japan. This interview is based on his new book, Malcolm Before X (University of Massachusetts Press, 2024). JF: What led you to write Malcolm Before X? PP: Back in 2012, I’d […]
intellectuals
The Author’s Corner with Kenneth S. Sacks
Kenneth S. Sacks is Professor of History and Classics at Brown University. This interview is based on his new book, Emerson’s Civil Wars: Spirit and Society in the Age of Abolition (Cambridge University Press, 2024). JF: What led you to […]
Israel-based progressive intellectuals and peace activists call for a “return to a politics based on humanistic and universal principles”
Several dozen Israeli-based academic progressives and peace activists have signed this letter. They are correct to suggest that the usual identity politics we often hear coming out of colleges and universities seem hollow in the wake of October 7, 2023. […]
Are public intellectuals condescending?
Becca Rothfield writes: “If the academic humanities too often address only siloed experts, then pop philosophy too often addresses an audience of imagined idiots. And condescension is an especially risky vice for public intellectuals, because it conflicts with the very […]
Umberto Eco on books and libraries
The Italian historian, cultural critic, and novelist Umberto Eco is one of the great thinkers of our time. Next week a film about his life and library opens in New York. It is titled “Umberto Eco: A Library of the […]
What is an intellectual? Some thoughts on Ibram X. Kendi’s piece in The Atlantic
In his recent piece at The Atlantic, Ibram X. Kendi describes how he has “struggled over what it means to be an intellectual.” Kendi is a National Book Award winner and a leading proponent of anti-racism from his perch aa […]
What can we learn from Antonio Gramsci?
Here is a taste of Jacobin‘s Daniel Denvir’s interview with Yale labor historian Michael Denning: DANIEL DENVIR: This argument has implications for what has often been called “false consciousness”: the question of what to make of people holding beliefs that […]
Where are today’s intellectuals?
Nick Burns asks this question at The New Statesman. Here is a taste of his piece: Moments of great upheaval throughout history often produce small groups of insolent, insurgent intellectuals. These groups, often on the fringes of cultural life, mount […]