Julien Benda

The other night at NYU, Tony Judt said, "Fasten your seatbelts it's going to be a bumpy night," and then dropping his scarf and jacket on the stage, gave a barnburner about the intellectual's responsibility. Here are some of his salient points:

1. Television has greatly narrowed the freedom of the intellectual to do his job and "disturb the public peace." 100 years ago, the French intellectual Julien Benda could stand up against the establishment for Alfred Dreyfus "because he was innocent... in the name of universal values, not particular interests." But that moment is over. Benda and others were given a platform by the rise of mass literacy in the 1880s; they were then disempowered by the rise of television in the 1970s. In that short 90 years, "educated elites had a mass literate audience." No longer. Today newspapers and foundations are not willing to support views "that make them uncomfortable."  read more »

2. Intellectuals are now in four spots. 1. Pundits. 2. Thinktanks. 3. Investigative journalists (like Gideon Levy and Anna Politkovskaya). 4. the academy.