PUBLIC LECTURE: Public Intellectuals and Public Academics

Abstract: The concept of the public intellectual has taken on a life of its own since Russell Jacoby’s 1987 book The Last Intellectuals. Everyone is a public intellectual today, it seems, and there is even a network of Australian public intellectuals. Based on Canadian government funded research on ‘Canadian professors as public intellectuals’, in this lecture Neil McLaughlin will discuss the sociology of academics and their public, the relationship between academics, journalists, media and writers and the broader institutional dynamics that facilitate or discourage the work of academics as public intellectuals.

Biographical note: Neil McLaughlin is an associate professor at McMaster University in Hamilton Ontario, where he teaches sociological theory. He has published in such academic and intellectual journals as The Canadian Journal of Sociology, Sociological Theory, Sociological Forum, The Sociological Quarterly and Dissent. His most recent publications include essays on "Edward Said as a Global Public Intellectual," the academic reception of George Orwell and "Canada's Impossible Science: Historical and Institutional Origins of the Coming Crisis in Anglo-Canadian Sociology." He is presently working on two major research projects: one on "Canadian Professors as Public Intellectuals" and another on the question of the global public intellectual.

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