Rekindling the Life of the Mind Within Today’s Neoliberal Universities

In the public imagination, the word “professor” evokes a variety of stereotypes: pedants, ideologues, bookworms and socially inept eggheads, among others. There’s:

• The absentminded professor: Epitomized by Fred MacMurray in The Absent-Minded Professor or Doc Brown in Back to the Future, this professor is brilliant but disconnected from everyday reality, lost in his own thoughts.
• The ivory tower elitist: Professor Gerald Lambeau in Good Will Hunting exemplifies the condescending, out-of-touch intellectual who values academic prestige over genuine human connection.
• The quirky eccentric: John Keating in Dead Poets Society is a lovable but unconventional teacher who encourages his students to “seize the day” through unorthodox teaching methods.
• The bluestocking: Maggie Smith in the Harry Potter series embodies the strict, intellectual woman who is all business and no nonsense.
• The manipulative lecher: Flap Horton in Terms of Endearment portrays the charismatic but lewd, lascivious professor who uses his position of power to manipulate or seduce others.
• The stern taskmaster: Professor Charles Kingsfield in The Paper Chase is the intimidating, uncompromising educator who pushes his students to their limits.
• The overworked adjunct: Professor Robert Vale in The Visitor reflects the reality of many academics today—overworked, underpaid and marginalized within the academic system.

These portrayals, while exaggerated and comedic, contain kernels of truth, both caricaturing and critiquing the professoriate. As an academic, I’ve encountered a complicated taxonomy of professors that goes beyond these stereotypes. Here are some distinct categories that reflect the complexity of academia today:

• The academic entrepreneurs: These scholars leverage their research and expertise to create partnerships, secure grants or even establish businesses or consultancies. While their work has practical, real-world applications, they are often viewed as prioritizing financial success and external validation over intellectual inquiry.
• The deadwood: Often tenured faculty who have disengaged from active scholarship, these academics are perceived as coasting through their careers, doing the bare minimum without contributing to research innovation, curriculum development or mentorship.
• The activists: Passionate about social justice and political causes, activist academics use their positions to advocate for change. While their work can be impactful, it sometimes leads to tension within the academy when activism is seen as overtaking scholarly rigor.
• The narrowly focused specialists: Scholars deeply committed to a particular niche within their discipline. While their work pushes the boundaries of their fields, their focus is often so narrow that it becomes inaccessible to those outside their specialty.
• The research rock stars: Known for their groundbreaking research and high productivity, these academics frequently publish in top-tier journals and secure large grants. However, their focus on research often comes at the expense of teaching and service.
• The popularizers: Academics who bridge the gap between academia and the general public. Though often envied or dismissed by colleagues for simplifying complex ideas, popularizers play a crucial role in making academic insights accessible and relevant beyond the ivory tower.
• The teaching stars: Charismatic and dedicated educators who prioritize pedagogy and student success. Beloved by students, these professors may struggle to gain recognition in research-focused institutions, where teaching is undervalued compared to research output.
• The university bureaucrats: Academics who transition into administrative roles, focusing on governance, policy and institutional strategy. While they are essential for the functioning of universities, they are often seen as disconnected from the day-to-day challenges of teaching and research.
• Public intellectuals: Figures like Noam Chomsky and Cornel West, who use their academic credentials to engage with the public on pressing social, political and cultural issues. They are often provocateurs, unafraid to challenge dominant narratives and engage in controversial debates.
• Genuine intellectuals: The rarest breed, these individuals are dedicated to the life of the mind, engaging with big ideas that transcend disciplinary boundaries. They pursue knowledge for its own sake and are less concerned with practical applications, making their work both profound and, at times, inaccessible.

There is a significant tension between these different academic roles, as each comes with different expectations and goals.

Specialists often view the broad, interdisciplinary approach of intellectuals as lacking in rigor, while public intellectuals and activists might see intellectuals as overly detached from the urgent issues of the day. Public intellectuals, in particular, often face the challenge of maintaining scholarly credibility while also engaging in accessible, sometimes polemical, public discourse.

Meanwhile, the role of an activist can conflict with the role of an intellectual, as activism requires a commitment to particular causes and solutions, while intellectual inquiry often remains open-ended and critical of all sides. Similarly, specialists who dive deeply into one area of study may resist the broad generalizations that public intellectuals sometimes need to make in order to engage the public.

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The academy today faces an imbalance, with too few true intellectuals—those dedicated to exploring the big questions that shape human existence and engaging deeply in discourse on aesthetic, ethical and philosophical matters.

The explanation is simple and straightforward: The modern American university system promotes hyperspecialization. Professors are trained to become experts in narrowly defined areas, producing research that deepens knowledge in their fields but often fails to engage with broader societal or interdisciplinary issues. Many academics become competent researchers in niche subjects but are neither inclined nor equipped to tackle larger intellectual questions outside their area of expertise. In contrast, intellectuals exhibit broad curiosity, engaging with ideas that transcend disciplinary boundaries.

Several structural factors contribute to this trend. Graduate students, from the outset, are trained to become specialists. Doctoral programs push students toward narrow research questions that will produce original contributions to their field. This focus is reinforced by dissertation requirements, job-market demands and tenure-track systems that reward technical expertise over wide-ranging intellectual inquiry.

Research universities, in particular, incentivize specialization. Success is often measured by one’s ability to publish in specialized journals, secure grants and contribute to a discipline in highly technical ways. This emphasis on narrow achievement leaves little space or motivation for professors to engage in broader intellectual exploration.

The publish-or-perish culture exacerbates this problem, pushing professors to produce specialized research aimed at other experts rather than a general audience. Peer-reviewed publications, often inaccessible to the public, further distance academics from engaging in broader intellectual debates. This shift limits academics’ public influence and constrains their ability to function as public intellectuals.

I recall a time when intellectual giants like Lawrence Stone, C. Vann Woodward and Eugene Genovese featured prominently in The New York Times Book Review, reviewing works of other leading historians. However, the commercialization of media and the rise of entertainment culture have shifted public attention away from complex, nuanced debates toward sound bites and celebrity-driven content, diminishing the intellectual rigor that once defined public discourse.

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The academy is one of the few places where intellectualism can thrive—where individuals can grapple with complex, abstract ideas and foster a culture of questioning assumptions, engaging in rigorous analysis and debating central issues. Without intellectualism, education becomes focused solely on vocational skills and professional training instead of cultivating independent, critical thinking.

The decline of intellectualism in higher education has far-reaching consequences. As it fades, we see a growing trend toward overspecialization and shallow learning. Many academics become deeply specialized in narrow fields but lack engagement with interdisciplinary thought, literature, history, the arts or ethical inquiry. This hyperspecialization creates technical experts but fewer thinkers who can integrate knowledge across disciplines or engage in big-picture thinking, solving problems that cross traditional boundaries.

As universities align more closely with market demands, the educational experience becomes transactional. This shift prioritizes producing graduates with marketable skills for immediate employability, sidelining the development of intellectual curiosity. In the long term, society faces a workforce skilled in task execution but less capable of adapting to or ethically addressing global challenges.

The erosion of intellectualism also impacts academic discourse. When the pursuit of knowledge is marginalized in favor of short-term goals like publishing, tenure or funding, research becomes jargon-heavy and overly specialized, often with little relevance to society. This trend also leads to grade inflation and diluted curricula, further undermining the quality and prestige of higher education.

Intellectualism, traditionally rooted in the humanities, fosters deep reflection on human nature, aesthetics, morality and societal values. However, the rise of STEM and business-oriented disciplines has marginalized the humanities, which are seen as less practical or financially beneficial. As a result, critical insights into the human condition, ethics and social progress are devalued.

The decline of intellectualism feeds into broader societal trends of anti-intellectualism, where expertise is dismissed and deep knowledge is undervalued. This is evident in the rejection of scientific consensus, the rise of conspiracy theories and general skepticism toward intellectual authority. When universities fail to prioritize intellectual rigor and thought leadership, they contribute to a public climate where expertise is less respected and dialogue becomes less informed.

The loss of intellectualism in the academy weakens not only universities but also the social fabric. Intellectualism fosters inquiry, critical thinking and ethical reflection—all of which are essential for a functioning democracy and a thoughtful society.

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We must restore the university’s historic role as the citadel of the intellect.

To revive intellectualism within colleges, institutions must intentionally prioritize broad-based inquiry over narrow specialization and career-focused training. Here’s how colleges can create a culture of intellectual curiosity and exploration:

1. Redesign the humanities component of general education.

Here’s how:

• Create freshman or sophomore colloquia focused on the history of ideas, introducing students to key intellectual movements across various eras.
• Offer interdisciplinary seminars that explore classic and contemporary works, encouraging students to draw connections between different fields like science, art and ethics.
• Implement “big questions” seminars that challenge students to grapple with philosophical and ethical dilemmas across disciplines.

2. Increase the number of small, discussion-based classes. Smaller, discussion-driven courses allow for the intellectual exchange of ideas, where students and professors can engage in deep, thoughtful conversations. This encourages reflective thinking and helps develop a space where curiosity thrives. Expanding these opportunities, particularly in lower-division courses, helps foster an intellectual community from the outset of the college experience.
3. Integrate the humanities into pre-professional degree pathways.

By incorporating humanities and social science courses into pre-professional pathways, universities can nurture well-rounded students who understand the ethical, cultural and social dimensions of their fields. For example:

• A health-care pathway should include exposure to literature and patient narratives that explore illness and healing from multiple perspectives, the history of medical practice, ethical frameworks for health-care decisions and the cultural, spiritual and psychological aspects of health and illness. It should also address social determinants of health, inequalities in access and the consequences of medicalizing everyday life.
• A prelaw pathway should include courses examining how literature illustrates and critiques legal concepts and institutions, the evolution of constitutional law and civil rights, and fundamental questions of law, justice and ethics. It should also address the ethical dimensions of legal practice, the regulation of cultural expression, the impact of emerging technologies on legal frameworks and how law reinforces power structures and inequalities.
• A pre-engineering pathway should explore the moral and ethical responsibilities of engineers, the societal impact of technology and historical case studies on how technology and society influence each other. It should emphasize communication skills for diverse audiences, global and cultural contexts of engineering challenges, and the role of engineers in addressing climate change and resource management. In addition, it should cover the aesthetic and functional aspects of design, the influence of human behavior on systems, relevant policy and regulatory frameworks, economic considerations like cost-benefit analysis, and issues of social justice and equitable technological distribution.
• A prebusiness pathway should examine the moral and ethical dimensions of business, the evolution of capitalism, government regulation, and the social dynamics of organizational behavior. It should emphasize communication skills for leadership, negotiation and teamwork, while exploring the psychological drivers behind consumer behavior and motivation. In addition, the curriculum should cover international business, globalization, cross-cultural communication, sustainability in decision-making and the legal frameworks shaping business practices.

4. Encourage faculty to act as genuine intellectuals. Incentivize faculty to engage intellectually beyond their specializations. Encourage cross-disciplinary research and teaching. Host public lecture series where faculty discuss the big ideas in accessible ways. Recognize those faculty members who contribute to fostering intellectual debates on campus.
5. Create intellectual communities beyond the classroom. Colleges should support extracurricular activities that foster intellectual engagement outside of formal instruction. These might include student-led reading groups, film series and campuswide conferences. Universities can create vibrant intellectual communities by establishing spaces (like cafes or lounges) that encourage spontaneous intellectual exploration and debate.
6. Reinvigorate the liberal arts ideal. To revive intellectualism, colleges must reaffirm the value of liberal arts education. This can be reflected in mission statements, recruiting materials and campus culture. Promoting student-led discussions on major philosophical questions, integrating art and music performances into campus life and hosting events focused on intellectual exploration—such as Idea Weeks—will help to reignite the intellectual spark in students.

By promoting the humanities, creating interdisciplinary dialogues and emphasizing the intrinsic value of intellectual exploration, colleges can reinvigorate the life of the mind on their campuses.

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Reviving intellectualism will require conscious efforts to value broad-based inquiry over mere technical expertise. Campuses must resist a narrow focus on careerism, overspecialization and a market driven curriculum and foster an environment that encourages intellectual risk taking. They must build intellectual communities and treat teaching as an intellectual, not merely as a practical, endeavor. Above all, they should emphasize the intrinsic importance of ideas, curiosity, the arts and critical engagement—pursued for their own sake rather than immediate practical returns.

Restoring intellectualism in higher education is about more than simply promoting the humanities or encouraging interdisciplinary study. It is about re-establishing the university as a sanctuary for deep thought, critical inquiry and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake. Intellectual curiosity must be reignited to ensure that students are not just passive recipients of job training but active participants in the intellectual life of society. In a world where the ability to interpret, analyze and critique is power, colleges must once again embrace intellectualism as central to their mission.

Intellectualism remains vital—not just for individual fulfillment, but for the collective well-being of society. Colleges are the one institution dedicated to ideas. Let’s not forsake that responsibility.