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About this quote

What does it mean?
Posner sees Chomsky as a problem for academic public intellectual quality.
In plain terms
He represents low quality in academic public debate.
What can you take from it?
Public intellectualism risks lowering academic rigor.

Where it applies

  • media commentary
  • academic circles
  • public discourse

Putting it to work

  • evaluate public intellectual quality

Questions to consider

  • Is public quality declining?
  • What defines a good intellectual?

Another view

It reduces quality to market appeal.

More from Noam Chomsky

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  2. [Noam Chomsky has] become the guru of the new anti-capitalist and Third World movements. They take his views very uncritically; it's part of the Seattle mood -…

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  3. [Noam Chomsky is] so far out on the lunatic fringe that even the sensible things he has to say are lost. --David Rieff, August 4, 1991 [212]

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