Public Intellectuals 2.1

Despite renewed interest in public intellectuals, the consensus view is that they are in a state of decline. Furthermore, the Internet is viewed as one of the factors accelerating their decline. This essay takes the contrary position: the growth of online venues has stimulated rather than retarded the quality and diversity of public intellectuals. The criticisms levied against these new forms of publishing seem to mirror the flaws that plague the more general critique of current public intellectuals: hindsight bias and conceptual fuzziness. Rather, the growth of blogs and other forms of online writing have partially reversed a trend that many have lamented what Russell Jacoby labeled “professionalization and academization” in The Last Intellectuals. In particular, the growth of the blogosphere breaks down or at least lowers the barriers erected by a professionalized academy. They also provide a vetting mechanism through which public intellectuals can receive feedback and therefore fulfill their roles more effectively.

The Social Sciences and a New Administration

The policy issues confronting the new administration in 2009 can benefit greatly from the results of social, behavioral, and economic sciences research. Climate change, energy, human capital, social, capital, migration, public health, fairness, new technologies, and foreign and defense policy are all issues that the research has addressed. The participation of social scientists in the policy process will enhance the contributions of the research.

Can We Have a Public Bioethic?

This essay examines the viability of a publically held, articulated, and enacted bioethic in America's democratic regime. The essay takes the writings of several thinkers associated with the President's Council on Bioethics as its point of departure. The essay draws attention to some of the enduring moral, political, religious, and intellectual currents inherent in American civil society that will continue to provide both resources for and obstacles to any publicly held bioethic in America.

Visions of National Service

While national service enjoys broad support across the political spectrum, the actual goals of programs such as AmeriCorps remain somewhat amorphous. Based on a set of interviews with both experienced. practitioners and key thought leaders in the field, four competing visions of national service are detailed. The article suggests that national service has alternatively been seen as a way to promote an active and engaged citizenship, accelerate the personal growth of the young people in the programs, build social capital in communities, and meet critical social needs through public work. These four competing visions can and do coexist in practice, which helps to explain the widespread and enduring popularity of the idea of national service in America.

The Phenomenon of Death

Daniel Callahan’s essay raises big and important questions about how the biotechnological project to extend life and defeat aging may bring many undesirable consequences. At worst, it will usher in a new age of extended debility, with able minds trapped for decades in enfeebled bodies or able bodies lingering for decades with enfeebled minds. At best, our future success at extending vigorous life will create serious disruptions of the social order. But the essay fails to illuminate, more fully, the nature of death as a human problem, or to establish the basis for setting limits on the worst excesses of the bio-immortality project.

Antwort auf die Replik von Marc Bühlmann,Wolfgang Merkel,Lisa Müller und Bernhard Weßels zum Forumsbeitrag von Thomas Müller und Susanne Pickel

Ohne Zusammenfassung

---

Intolerance Toward Gays and Lesbians in Poland

The protection of rights of freedom of speech and assembly for gays and lesbians in Poland has come under greater international scrutiny because of the mismanagement of peaceful demonstrations throughout Poland in 2005. An overview and context of the political, economic, and social transformation of Poland in the 1990s shows a flourish of activity among gays and lesbians as the economic and political spheres open, as well as weaker law enforcement during the rapid change to capitalism and democracy. Although society has opened dramatically and tolerance has grown recently, the concept of protecting minority rights for gays and lesbians in Poland continues to be weak in public opinion, laws, and the top sources of opinion.

---

Wie lässt sich Demokratie am besten messen? Zum Forumsbeitrag von Thomas Müller und Susanne Pickel

Ohne Zusammenfassung * Die vier Autor(inn)en arbeiten in einem gemeinsamen Forschungsprojekt des NCCR Democracy (vom Schweizerischen Nationalfonds finanziertes National Centre of Competence in Research: Challenges to Democracy in the 21^st Century) und des WZB an einem „Demokratiebarometer“ für die 30 OECD-Staaten, das die Ignoranz der 0-Varianz bei Polity und Freedom House aufkl?ren will.

---

Public Intellectuals as Media Critics

In the 1940s, leading public intellectuals established a commission to reform the American press. Many of them initially favored heavy regulation of newspapers and other media. Though the men failed to change the press, their report lives on in schools of journalism.

Homeland security and citizen response to emergency situations: a perspective on the need for a policy approach to information access

Open access to public information is a hallmark of American political culture; however, the terrorist attacks on and before September 11, 2001 have prompted a reevaluation of how “freedom of information” should be balanced against the need for enhanced homeland security. This essay begins with a summary of legislative and executive actions that have led to restriction of environmental and health-related information formerly available to the public. Drawing on studies of disaster behavior, it is argued that citizen responders may be significantly hampered by restriction of environmental and public health-related information formerly available by means of public access web sites. The Lasswellian policy decision process is examined to explore the basis for a balancing test for agencies contemplating restriction of information related to environmental and public health-related threats. It is suggested that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) implement guidance for federal agencies in weighing decisions concerning the public status of information.

Blogs and the Attention Market for Public Intellectuals

Public intellectuals are successful suppliers of commentary in the attention market for serious thought. Blogs are a relatively new technology that substantially alters this market. More people can now nurse aspirations to be public intellectuals, but blogs also make plain the difficulties of actually reaching a public in ways that books do not. Blogs also vitiate other romantic ideas about the public intellectual as transcendent figure. Even so, blogs may well provide the services for which transcendent public intellectuals are often lauded better than these figures ever did.

Socialist Heroes in East German Schoolbooks

Based on examples of socialist heroes from East German schoolbooks and teaching guides designed for elementary school, this essay examines the role of state ideology in primary education. It assesses the German curriculum of the now-defunct German Democratic Republic (GDR) and illuminates distinctions between civic education and political propaganda. It also shows how the curricular emphasis on socialist virtue helped to form “the socialist personality.”

European Professors as Public Intellectuals

Historically, European economists, compared to their American counterpart, were more involved in public discussions of policy. In this paper it is argued that this has likely changed. The chief reasons seem to involve the European imitation of the academic ethos that is more prevalent in America. Features of this academic ethos include a more formalist orientation in graduate programs and an academic incentive system wherein professional journal publication is paramount and public discourse is relatively devalued. I suggest there is an inescapable ideological dilemma in addressing the costs and benefits of professors’ neglect of public discourse. The ideological character of academics compared with our own political sensibilities affect whether we want academics to influence public discourse or not. I use the history of academics as public intellectuals in Sweden to substantiate the change, and I use new data on Swedish social science academics to see whether those who participate in public discourse tend to have certain political and social views.

From Dictatorship to Democracy: Four Chilean Women’s Memories

A law school dean, a university president, a scholarly judge, and the head of the Foreign Ministry division in charge of Chile’s frontiers agree: The Constitution of 1980 was the initial turning point in Chile’s transition from autocracy to pluralism.

The Interstate Sprawl System

The Interstate Sprawl System is an article about the role of automobile transportation in the culture and civilization of the USA. After demonstrating that all previous civilizations in history have gathered around trading ports, where land values rise as the proximity to the port increases, it analyses the changes wrought by the grid system of transportation brought on by the automobile in the USA, where land values remain fairly constant and no core trading centers can be found. These changes include the decimation of the old port cities as well as the urbanization of rural lands. The article concludes with an appeal to encourage inter-city rapid rail as the obvious antidote to the problem.

Never Pick a Fight with an Ugly Person,They’ve Got Nothing to Lose

In the 1970s, social psychologists conducted numerous studies analyzing physical appearance as a social variable. More recent studies in the social sciences appear to have abandoned this topic as unimportant; in any case, very few social scientific studies have been found that incorporate a measure of attractiveness into their analyses. The present study seeks to revive the emphasis on physical attractiveness as a social variable by testing the relationship between crime severity and physical attractiveness, i.e., by presenting evidence to suggest that physically unattractive men commit more serious offenses.

Extending a Life with Meaning

This essay questions Callahan’s criticism of people’s aspiration to extend their life. It argues that ideas about life are subject to historical variations and the question at issue is whether society can give meaning to aging. It also questions the claim that the radical extension of human life will jeopardize the welfare of future generations. It suggests that the application of the precautionary principle to the question of aging avoid facing up to question how society should value the old.

What Body Parts Do We Owe Each Other?

The American experience in organ transplantation illuminates the attitudes and practices that underlie the ongoing failure to establish a national health insurance system. In both spheres, the public makes a sharp divide between the well-being of intimates and the well-being of strangers. Private and public duties remain distinct; obligations recognized on a personal level do not expand public commitments. As a result, individuals must shift for themselves, whether they require an organ donor or a doctor. In the world of transplantation as in the world of health care more generally, we are all on our own.

Day Laborers and Dock Workers: Casual Labor Markets and Immigration Policy

The situations of nineteenth century dock workers and today’s immigrant day laborers bear striking similarities and challenges, especially for those seeking to organize them into labor unions. The obstacles confronting such organizing efforts also underscore the legitimate concerns many Americans have about the threats to social order posed by immigrants today.