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- The Self-Hating Jew
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- Dennis Prager v Cedars-Sinai Lawsuit
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- What is a ‘Received Idea’?
- Jordan Bardella: The Manufacture of Normality
- Everyone Became Television: Bourdieu’s Warning and the 2026 Iran War
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- Walker Connor (1926-2017)
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* Mr. Burge Draws The Line (6-23-26)
* 'Improving on Democracy' (6-17-26)
* People Leak To People Who Are Fun (6-11-26)
* Why Does Australia Produce So Many Great Journalists? (6-11-26)
* Steve Wynn and the Press: Power, Litigation, and the Contest Over Las Vegas (6-3-26)
* Sheldon Adelson and the Journalists (6-3-26)
* The Vigilant Animal: Thinkers Who Reject the Myth of Human Gullibility (6-2-26)
* The Cost of Refusing the Misunderstanding Myth (6-2-26)
* Show Me How It Travels (6-2-26)
* The Norm Explainers (6-2-26)
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* What would it look like if the Washington Post put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Financial Times put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for the Los Angeles Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for The New York Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
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* The Emotional Palettes Of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco & Sacramento (5-27-26)
* The Administrative Capital: Sacramento Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* San Diego - The Quiet Republic (5-27-26)
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* SF v LA Legal Culture (5-27-26)
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Category Archives: Intellectuals
Who Are The Leading Public Intellectuals Doing The Least Alliance Work?
Alliance work is a behavior, not a property of a man. The same writer can do almost none of it on one subject and a great deal on another. John McWhorter (b. 1965) imposes costs on his own side when … Continue reading
Posted in Intellectuals
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The Cost of Refusing the Misunderstanding Myth
Most intellectuals hold a flattering belief. They think the world breaks because people fail to understand things. Fix the understanding and you fix the world. Polarization comes from bias. Bigotry comes from ignorance. War comes from miscalculation. The intellectual, the … Continue reading
Posted in David Pinsof, Intellectuals
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Famous Writers Stuck In The Trap Of Audience Expectations
Most famous writers know more than they say but they keep turning out blinkered work anyway. A few have refused. Stuck in the trap: Ta-Nehisi Coates (b. 1975) writes for college-educated liberal Whites who buy his books and grant him … Continue reading
Posted in Intellectuals
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The Neglected Intellectual
The sociology of intellectuals has a thin but useful shelf on this. Lewis Coser (1913-2003), Edward Shils (1910-1995), Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002), Russell Jacoby (b. 1945), and Randall Collins (b. 1941) all treat the complaint of neglect as a structural feature … Continue reading
Posted in Guru, Intellectuals
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Did Israel Go To War With An Idea On October 7?
Intellectuals see a world rotating around ideas. They love the idea, for example, that America is an idea, and that Israel went to war with an idea on October 7. I don’t see things this way. I think America is … Continue reading
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The Lonely Path Of The Unauthorized Jewish Intellectual
The unauthorized Jewish intellectual occupies a specific structural position. He speaks in his own name, accepts the social cost, and refuses to let Jewish meaning be mediated entirely by rabbis, states, or universities. He writes for adults rather than committees. … Continue reading
Posted in Intellectuals, Orthodoxy
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‘More on the decline and fall of Steven Levitt’
If you optimize for truth, you are less likely to go downmarket chasing likes. Optimizing for truth is good, but like all good things, it can be taken too far. Just as you can drink too much and engage in … Continue reading
Posted in Intellectuals
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Why Are Intellectuals Antinomic?
I didn’t know the meaning of “antinomic” when a philosopher emailed that analysis of intellectuals so off I went to ChatGPT, which explained: If we take Edward Shils’ theory seriously—that intellectuals are structurally antinomic—then the consequences run through their inner … Continue reading
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On Public Intellectualism in the Twenty-First Century
Michael Zuckert writes in the 2016 book Public Intellectuals in the Global Arena: Professors or Pundits? * the lure of public fame, power, and even wealth made available through the mass public audience leads to suspicions about the motives of … Continue reading
Posted in Intellectuals
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The Existentialist Moment: The Rise of Sartre as a Public Intellectual
Cambridge sociologist Patrick Baert writes in this 2015 book: * There is fourthly the authenticity bias. We are referring to those studies of intellectuals that assume that intellectuals have a clear sense of their identity and values, with these self-notions … Continue reading
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