Far from the public debate: the university intellectuals in Post War USA

Abstract

In this paper we examine the history of the relations between the academy and the public service in the USA, soon after the Second World War. Instead of emphazing the individual qualities of the proeminent intellectuals of the period, we try to identify the institutional and political factors that contributed for a dialogue between the especialized academic discourse and the political actions that, sometimes, were far from the public debate. Among other things, we intend to show that the exterior logic of the academic discourse was not the same logic of reproduction of the academy as an institution.