China s Struggling Public Intellectuals

On November 23, 2004, an article in the Shanghai Party Committee s orthodox Liberation Daily disagreed. It attacked the concept of public intellectuals, claiming that their independence drives a wedge between intellectuals and the Party and between intellectuals and the masses.

These Muslim thinkers and intellectuals and statesmen of the 19th century looked at Europe, saw these things.

Wise men talk about ideas, intellectuals about facts, and the ordinary man talks about what he eats.

Facilitating and encouraging interaction and exchange among all individuals, inter alia, intellectuals, thinkers and artists of various societies and civilizations

Great intellectuals like Abelard, Erasmus, Galileo, Voltaire, Zola, and Russell each challenged the pieties of his era, and we now regard their success as a good thing. But most of us are likely to recoil at the methods they used in their work as intellectuals caricature, deception, and even fabrication.

A deep political crisis ensued, characterized by the stifling of public freedoms and the arrest of politicians, opinion leaders and intellectuals.

As a Frenchman, I must say that there are a lot of French intellectuals that think happiness is not at all interesting.

As a result, a growing number of intellectuals have routinely found racist or xenophobic speech, writing and, therefore, acts acceptable and legitimate.

When events shift, it becomes obsolete. As Charles Morris wrote Intellectuals are reliable lagging indicators, near infallible guides to what used to be true.

When events shift, it becomes obsolete. As Charles Morris wrote Intellectuals are reliable lagging indicators, near infallible guides to what used to be true.

Moscow intellectuals debate whether the current economic crisis will bring a new wave of liberalization to Russia. This is the key question for me.

Global leaders whether policymakers or intellectuals bear a responsibility to prepare their societies for impending global shifts. But too many American leaders are shirking this responsibility.

The result was a genocide in which as many as three million people, particularly minorities and intellectuals, were killed. Dhaka University s residential halls were particularly targeted.

(f) To accelerate the process of the investigation into the suspicious deaths and killings of intellectuals and political activists and to bring the alleged perpetrators to justice

(i) The ongoing lack of clarity concerning all the circumstances surrounding the suspicious deaths and killings of intellectuals and political activists in late 1998 and early 1999

Scholars, thinkers, intellectuals, writers, scientists, people of arts, culture and media and the youth, who play an instrumental role in initiation and sustainment of dialogue among civilizations

Some of them were very brilliant, some of them were, you know, ordinary people who would never claim to be intellectuals, but it was never about that.

Salman Rushdie called her the first refugee from Western Europe since the Holocaust. French intellectuals, never shy of public posturing, are campaigning to give her French citizenship.

That trend is generally called Islamic modernism, and it was advanced by intellectuals and statesmen, not just as an intellectual idea though, but also as a political program.

And first of all, you know, despite what the French intellectuals say, it seems that no one wakes up in the morning thinking, May I suffer the whole day?

Traditional versus modern, urban versus rural, intellectuals versus the peasantry these divisions are the stuff of political cliché. But, all too often, clichés become established because they are true.

The invited delegates were selected from the same eight groupings as before political parties, representatives elect, national races, peasants, workers, intellectuals and intelligentsia, State service personnel and ceasefire groups.

In the 1970s, under the Pol Pot regime, the Khmer Rouge killed over a million people, and they focused and targeted the elites and the intellectuals, the artists, the dancers.

And these were intellectuals or statesmen of the 19th century, and later, 20th century, which looked at Europe basically and saw that Europe has many things to admire, like science and technology.

And it is not only the monks who are united. When we started our peaceful marches for change, students, youth, intellectuals, and ordinary people joined us in the streets, in the rain.

Intellectuals, on the other hand, have a special obligation to think the unthinkable and speak the unspeakable. They are supposed to consider all possibilities, even disagreeable ones, and prepare the population for prospective developments.

Fourth, what is the appropriate size of the US military? Many defense intellectuals, former military leaders, and politicians believe that America s military, particularly the ground forces, are too small to implement Bush s grand strategy.

Well I say we have to stop thinking about the number of iPods per capita and start thinking about ways in which we can empower intellectuals, dissidents, NGOs and then the members of civil society.

Many intellectuals disdain popular culture because of its crude commercialism. But such scorn is misplaced, because popular entertainment often contains subtle images and messages about individualism, consumer choice, and other values that have important political effects.

All three were subsequently vindicated sometimes in their lifetimes, sometimes not. What they shared is a paradoxical ethic common to all intellectuals the end cause of truth justifies whatever means happens to be at your disposal.

The fear of globalization in the West is nothing new. Articulate intellectuals and groups such as labor unions and environmental organizations in the advanced economies have voiced anti globalization fears and sentiments for at least a quarter century.

This spring marks the centenary of the birth of two all round intellectuals, those ideological avatars of the Cold War era, Raymond Aron and Jean Paul Sartre. Aron was born on March 14, 1905, Sartre on June 21.

To an intellectual, an academic may look like someone who mistakes the means of inquiry for its end. But to academics, intellectuals look like ramblers freely trespassing on other people s property, picking the fruits and despoiling the soil.

In short, intellectuals want their audiences to think for themselves, not simply shift allegiances from one expert to another. The intellectual s ethic is both exhilarating and harsh, for it places responsibility for thinking squarely on the thinker s shoulders.

Over the 10 years of its existence, this Sarajevo project has grown into a single international cooperation of artistic and cultural institutions, administrations of cities and regions, artists and intellectuals from Europe and the rest of the world.

In 1977, several prominent signatories, such as Václav Havel, were arrested as a result. Likewise, one of the bravest, most lucid Chinese intellectuals, Liu Xiaobo, was arrested in December for signing Charter 08, and has yet to be released.

The young people at Shahbag are mainly urban, educated, and middle class Hifazat derives its support mainly from the rural poor. Traditional versus modern, urban versus rural, intellectuals versus the peasantry these divisions are the stuff of political cliché.

Whatever happened to the European Union s Lisbon Strategy? Not only is the public almost entirely ignorant of the EU s policy agenda for boosting competitiveness, economic growth, and employment, but this ignorance extends to many intellectuals, academics, CEO s, and even some MP s.

No matter what criterion one uses, Japan's economy remains the most closed among OECD countries and one of the most closed in the world. Not only is foreign capital conspicuously absent, but so are foreign managers, workers, intellectuals, and ideas.

After 70 years of denial, Russia s leadership (if not yet ordinary Russians) were ready to admit that Joseph Stalin s NKVD (precursor to the KGB) slaughtered more than 20,000 Polish officers, intellectuals, and clergy in the nearby Katyn forest in 1940.

Indeed, many of my Harvard colleagues would make terrible policymakers, owing to a lack of leadership, managerial, or other interpersonal skills. And many excellent political leaders for example, George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower, among US presidents have not been intellectuals.

Political leaders plead impotence, intellectuals dream up implausible global governance schemes, and the losers increasingly blame immigrants or imports. Talk about re empowering the nation state and respectable people run for cover, as if one has proposed reviving the plague.

Aron preferred demonizing fellow intellectuals as alarmists than conceding that the Cold War might eventuate in a nuclear holocaust. Sartre castigated those who failed to resist oppression when they could have, while excusing those who enforced oppression given the chance.

Disgruntlement over the increasingly authoritarian governance may be common among business circles, elements of the neutered political opposition, liberal intellectuals, and even part of the bureaucracy. But these forces are too timid and fragmented, with no drive for political action.