Let’s face it: In our guild, more often than not, the term “public” is akin to a four-letter word. For many, placing the word public in front of intellectual, at best, creates a lesser species, and at worst, invokes an oxymoron. A rather crude academic orthodoxy — we all pick it up in graduate school — is that to go public is to dumb down. One can’t possibly address the public — read: be popular, accessible, etc. — and still be smart (or maintain intellectual integrity), the logic goes. Still, even if such thinking is widely accepted as the norm, socialization into the academy is anything but consistent in this regard...
To Continue Reading, go to the American American of Religion's "In the Public Interest" column.