[lbo-talk] Growing moderatism in academia

[Tayssir John Gabbour]

On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 3:57 AM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
>> (For instance, you'd expect that the businesses surrounding/within
>> universities would be labs in advanced economic systems.
>
> Why? That would be subverting their purpose for existing, which is to
> generate apologetics for capitalism. And they do this very well. You are
> utterly confusing the question of "intellectuals" with the question of
> Which Side are You On? There are intellectuals, very intelligent and
> competent one, on both sides.

Yes, you're right -- I had a very mistaken view of what intellectuals did.

And I agree there's confusion in the terms I used. If you look at the
problem-solving and reasoning skills that goes into many jobs, we'll
probably find many more "intellectuals" than is commonly thought.
Cooks, hotel receptionists, mechanics, etc. They too build models
(often very complicated ones), use them as surrogates of reality,
improvise, think under stress, etc.

And Ralph Nader points out that sports takes up a lot of intellectual
effort -- children memorize statistics, commentators use flowery
literary language (wasn't Keith Olbermann one?), "authority figures"
are heavily scrutinized, etc.

So what do we mean by "intellectual"?

Tayssir