Editing Intellectual (section)

=== Public policy ===
In the matters of [[Public policy doctrine|public policy]], the public intellectual connects scholarly research to the practical matters of solving societal problems. The British sociologist [[Michael Burawoy]], an exponent of [[public sociology]], said that professional sociology has failed by giving insufficient attention to resolving social problems, and that a dialogue between the academic and the layman would bridge the gap.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Social Scientist As Public Intellectual: Critical Reflections In A Changing World|last=Gattone|first=Charles|date=2006|publisher=Rowman and Littlefield}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=March 2021}} An example is how [[Chile]]an intellectuals worked to reestablish [[democracy]] within the [[Right-wing politics|right-wing]], [[Neoliberalism|neoliberal]] governments of the [[Military dictatorship of Chile (1973–90)|military dictatorship of 1973–1990]], the Pinochet régime allowed professional opportunities for some liberal and left-wing social scientists to work as politicians and as consultants in effort to realize the theoretical economics of the [[Chicago Boys]], but their access to [[Power (social and political)|power]] was contingent upon political [[pragmatism]], abandoning the political neutrality of the academic intellectual.<ref>Sorkin (2007)</ref>

In ''[[The Sociological Imagination]]'' (1959), [[C. Wright Mills]] said that academics had become ill-equipped for participating in public discourse, and that journalists usually are "more politically alert and knowledgeable than sociologists, economists, and especially ... political scientists".<ref name=Mills>{{cite book|title=The Sociological Imagination|last=Mills|first=Charles Wright|author-link=C. Wright Mills|date=1959|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford}}</ref>{{rp|99}} That, because the universities of the U.S. are bureaucratic, private businesses, they "do not teach [[Critical thinking|critical reasoning]] to the student", who then does not know "how to gauge what is going on in the general struggle for power in modern society".<ref name=Mills/>{{Page needed|date=March 2021}} Likewise, [[Richard Rorty]] criticized the quality of participation of intellectuals in public discourse as an example of the "civic irresponsibility of [[Intellectualism|intellect]], especially academic intellect".<ref name=Bender/>{{rp|142}}
{{external media | width = 210px | float = right | headerimage= | video1 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?169625-1/public-intellectuals ''Booknotes'' interview with Posner on ''Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline'', June 2, 2002], [[C-SPAN]]}} The American legal scholar [[Richard Posner]] said that the participation of academic public intellectuals in the public life of society is characterized by logically untidy and politically biased statements of the kind that would be unacceptable to academia. He concluded that there are few ideologically and politically independent public intellectuals, and disapproved public intellectuals who limit themselves to practical matters of public policy, and not with [[Value (ethics)|values]] or [[public philosophy]], or public [[ethics]], or [[public theology]], nor with matters of moral and spiritual outrage.