Blogs, Public Intellectuals and the Academy

While the dom­i­nant trope about pub­lic intel­lec­tu­als is that they ain’t what they used to be, Daniel Drezner is rel­a­tively bull­ish:

Over time the acad­e­m­iza­tion of intel­lec­tual out­put cre­ated bar­ri­ers to the flour­ish­ing of pub­lic intel­lec­tu­als. The pro­lif­er­a­tion of blogs reverses that trend in sev­eral ways. Weblogs have facil­i­tated the rise of a new class of non-academic intellectuals.…For aca­d­e­mics aspir­ing to be pub­lic intel­lec­tu­als, weblogs allow net­works to develop that cross the dis­ci­pli­nary and hier­ar­chi­cal stric­tures of the acad­emy – and expand beyond the academy.