How Academe Shortchanges Conservative Thinking

Notwithstanding the outcome of the recent election, in one respect, the last few decades mark a breakthrough era for conservative intellectuals. Their visibility has soared.

This is a disabling situation for conservative intellectuals. When a distinctive intellectual identity emerged 100 years ago in France, it did so as an adversarial one. People qualified as intellectuals by acquiring knowledge through education and extending their expertise into protest, rising above the blandishments of money and position to represent higher things. What kept them honest and credible was, precisely, their independence. What kept them authoritative was the fact that they had developed their opinions in a disinterested setting.

The denial of legitimacy creates a distorted intellectual environment, and everyone suffers. American society, not to mention students, is poorly served when ideas in the public sphere don't undergo conceptual, historical, and political analysis in the classroom. Unfortunately, the curricular attention that conservative minds and ideas actually gather is reflexive and shallow. It's not even an adversarial relationship. It's barely any relationship at all.