ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN AMERICAN LIFE REVISITED* Robert Westbrook _______________________________________________
Anti-intellectualism is a staple of American cultural history, and we would do well to remind ourselves of this lest we exaggerate the peculiarities of our own moment or romanticize the past.
Last month, as I was rereading Richard Hofstadter's Anti-
Intellectualism in American Life (1963) and thinking about what I might say on this occasion, an op-ed appeared in my local paper by John Michael, a member of the English department at the University of Rochester, entitled "When brains mattered: Once, we pointy-headed intellectuals had an honored position."**
In this
op-ed, Michael, ruefully reflecting on the story of Mark and Charles Van Doren in Robert Redford's film, Quiz Show, argued that the 1950s was a time, unlike our own, when "the people at large possessed a degree of confidence in intellectuals . . . that today seems surprising."
He marveled that an English
instructor "could be packaged by television as a hot property," and contended that "the charisma that attached to both Van Dorens was less the result of personal magnetism than it was the product of a romantic vision of the egg-head widely (though certainly not universally or unambiguously) shared by the general public." *
Paper presented at a conference on "The University in the Public Eye," Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University, 29 September 1995. Do not cite, quote, or copy without permission of the author. © 1995 **
Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, N.Y.), 22 August 1995.