Over at Commonweal, Costică Brădăţan writes about how a year of factory work in the auto industry led French philosopher Simone Weil to Jesus Christ. Here is a taste: As Weil was processing the significance of her factory experience, she...
public intellectuals
What happens to the students of leftists who couldn’t find jobs in academia?
I’ve read a lot of Russell Jacoby over the years. I imagine his recent piece at Tablet is going to anger a lot of people. I also don’t think he cares. Whatever the case, his ideas are worth considering. Here...
Christopher Hitchens: “an émigré from England come to the New World to tell us what the universal words of our Declaration meant, and hold us to them.”
Check out Matt Johnson’s piece on the late Christopher Hitchens at The Bulwark. The piece is excerpted from Johnson’s forthcoming book, How Hitchens Can Save the Left: Rediscovering Fearless Liberalism in an Age of Counter-Enlightenment. Here is a taste: In...
Are intellectuals and historians “yoking their reputations to the delirious churn of outrage media?”
Joseph Keegin, the editor of The Point, gives us a lot to think about in this piece at The Chronicle of Higher Education. Here is a taste: As academic humanities departments shed undergraduates and lose both prestige and funding, professors...
Who is Michael Lind?
Over at New York Magazine, Eric Levitz reviews the work of public intellectual Michael Lind. The piece is much more nuanced than its title. Here is a taste of “The Delusions of the Radical Centrist”: …Michael Lind, has long been...
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...