Public Intellectuals

My models of American public intellectuals are John Dewey in the 1920's and Walter Lipman in the 1930's. Public intellectuals disappeared during the cold war because most were lefties and a discussion of how much communism America needed was too boring a subject. Only Sidney Hook and Daniel Bell escaped the lefty pall of irrelevance.

Today we have a plethora of emerging public intellectuals. Many have websites.

Foud Ajami, professor middle east studies

Joyce Appleby, Historian,

Pascal Bruckner, writer

David Brooks, journalist

Fredrick Crews, English

Mary Douglas, anthropologist,

Daniel W. Drezner

Catherine Elgin, philosopher

Stanley Fish, English

Francis Fukayama

Clifford Geertz anthropologist

Todd Gitlin

Stephan Greenblatt, historian

Victor David Hanson

David Hollinger, historian

Christopher Hitchens, journalist

Michael Ignatieff, journalist, professor

Robert Kagan

Irving Kristol

William Kristol

Laurence Lessig, lawyer

Martin Peretz New Republic

Daniel Pipes

Richard A. Posner

Virginia Postrel

Jonathan Rauch

Richard Rorty

Elaine Scarry, English

Andrew Sullivan, journalist;

Leon Wieseltier, New Republic

Daniel Yergin, oil economics

Some are online all the time, some write for magazines and newspapers and others write on occasion -- as needed.