This seems to be an interesting article in terms of developing one’s role as a public intellectual. The ethics of speaking truth in the age of post-truth has never been more important.
Hierarchy of Levels of Public Intellectual
Let me now define what I mean by the public intellectual today" Such a person is often a trained in a particular discipline, such as linguistics, biology, history, economics, literary criticism, and who is on the faculty of a college or university. When such a person decides to write and speak to a larger audience than their professional colleagues, he or she becomes a "public intellectual."
- Level I: Speaking and writing for the public exclusively about your discipline. This kind of discourse is extremely important, and it involves good, clear, simplified explanations of the national debt, the how cancer genes work, or whatever your subject is. A recent book that illustrates this level is Brian Green's excellent book The Elegant Universe, on the branch of physics called string theory.
- Level II: Speaking and writing about your discipline and how it relates to the social, cultural, and political world around it. A scientist in this Level II category might include a lot of biographical material, glimpses into the society and anthopology of the culture of science. For example, James Watson's The Double Helix, or Steven Weinberg's essays about science and culture or science and religion in The New York Review of Books. Gerald Early's book, The Culture of Bruising, with essays on how racial issues are played out in prizefighting, would fit into this category. Or Steve Pinker's op ed piece in the The New York Times a year or so ago about the deeper meaning of President Clinton's use of language in the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
- Level III: By invitation only. The intellectual has become elevated to a symbol, a person that stands for something far larger than the discipline from which he or she originated. A Level III intellectual is asked to write and speak about a large range of public issues, not necessarily directly connected to their original field of expertise at all. After he became famous in 1919, Einstein was asked to give public addresses on religion, education, ethics, philosophy, and world politics. Einstein had become a symbol of gentle rationality and human nobility. Gloria Steinheim has become a symbol of modern feminist thought. Lester Thurow has become a symbol of the global economy.
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Have a distinctive voice
Anonymous accounts do not have to have a name or a face, but must offer an original perspective. The pseudonymous accounts @EthicistForHire and @CrankyEthicist offer potential followers a clear guide of what to expect.
One of the most successful anonymous academic accounts, @AcademicsSay, posts jokes that academics connect with – about coffee, being overworked and the ever-present catchphrase “you should be writing”. These highly shareable posts keep the account focused and identifiable, and have drawn a huge following.
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Rather than just posting into the void, the best academic accounts use the tools of social media to find an audience. There are hashtags such as #twitterstorians, for example, where historians post their thoughts. I use #TheoryTime, so my followers can catch up on topics they may have missed.
Try new formats
I quickly realised the limitations of Twitter and decided to expand my account into a research blog, as well as using the platform I had built on Twitter to write on new websites, bringing my work to a much wider audience.
Create connections
Social media allows for academics to become relatable – Twitter is a space for conversation and mutual education. I try to keep the important details of my life private, but a few personal details, as well as opinions and replies to followers, make the account more interesting and fun for those following.
- He or she must generally be able and willing not only to translate scientific and scholarly knowledge to a language understandable for non-‐specialists (other specialists included), but also to be short.
- In public discourses the participants will have a few minutes, or a few pages, to convey facts, interpretations and evaluations, and to answer criticism.
- The public intellectual must understand the larger context of communication in order to be able to make the specialized knowledge relevant for outside audiences.
- The good academic intellectual is able and willing to communicate, to answer questions, comments and critique, it is a dialogue, not a monologue. It is not uncommon that academic intellectuals disagree.
- There are not only disagreements between specialists from different disciplines, but also within the same discipline or field, such as specialists on the Middle East, physicists and psychiatrists.