Education: Parnassus, Coast to Coast

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What does it mean to be an intellectual in the U.S.? Is he really in such an unhappy plight as he sometimes thinks—the ridiculed double-dome, the egghead, the wild-eyed, absent-minded man who is made to feel an alien in his own country?

Ever since World War II, U.S. intellectuals have, as never before, been debating these questions. But in the course of the debate, one note has been struck time and time again, and no one has sounded it more clearly than Historian Jacques Barzun of Columbia University. If there is a traditional distrust of ideas in the U.S., says Barzun, the nation's men of ideas have still "won recognition in tangible ways beyond any previous group of their peers." And more important, many have come at last to realize that they are true and proud participants in the American Dream.

Thus, Barzun warns, those who continue to grumble at America are merely singing a worn-out tune. "They forget that the true creator's role, even in its bitterest attack, is to make us understand or endure life better. Our intellectuals do neither when they entice us to more self-contempt."

Whose Fault? The grumblers have not always grumbled without cause. But they have so distorted the picture that it would sometimes seem that the intellectual is America's hopeless Displaced Person. He is not only supposed to be the man that Senator McCarthy is after; he is also supposed to be the man that the rest of the nation persistently chooses to ignore or scorn. Diplomat George Kennan has said: "I can think of few countries in the world where the artist, the writer, the composer or the thinker is held in such general low esteem as he is here in our country."

Such sweeping charges have brought equally sweeping countercharges. French Dominican Raymond-Leopold Bruckberger says that the present plight of the U.S. intellectual is largely "the fault of the American intellectuals themselves . . .

The American intellectual often tends to say that his country has failed him ... I wonder if the contrary is not true. Perhaps the American intellectual has failed his country, and perhaps he is more deeply missed than is at first apparent. When the intellectual turns his back on his country, his place remains empty—while he complains that he has no place at all."

Symbols & Tags. Though almost as old as the nation, the cries of anti-intellectualism from one side and anti-Americanism from the other seem to be dominant themes in the postwar era. If the symbol of the '20s was the disgruntled intellectual who went to live in Europe, the present symbol—to the pessimists, at least—is the disgruntled intellectual who has stayed at home because he has no other place to go. The crusading muckraker, the flamboyant expatriate, the dedicated brain-truster—all these convenient tags are gone. While the European intellectual goes about his traditional business and enjoys traditional respect, the American sometimes feels that he is the forgotten man. He seems to have little to say, and even when he does, he is supposed to be so intimidated that he dare not say it.