This month the College has a speaker from the Right coming to balance viewpoints presented by speakers from the Left last semester. It’s all part of the continuing and noble effort to build "intellectual climate" on campus. It is, to me, a clear indication of the broad gulf between the political and the intellectual.

No doubt, intellectual matters are ideological. However this continuing misperception of ideological as equivalent with political is unfortunate. Politics often seems to be the opposite of intellectual discourse. In politics, we have little intention of changing our mind and our only interest in even hearing the "other side" is to use what they say against them later on (sort of sounds like graduate school, come to think of it).

By situating campus intellectual climate within the framework of political debate, I’m afraid we provide a poor example for what intellectual behavior should be. My point is that you wouldn’t bring these  speakers from the Left and the Right into the same room, unless you wanted some kind of cockfight or something. Instead of actual discourse, actual intellectual exchange, we get posturing and lecturing.

Is this how we view academic, intellectual work? as political posturing? as gathering people to the cause?

I would hope not.

On the other hand, maybe this is what we imagine would interest our students. Perhaps it is not especially interesting to watch open-minded intellectuals discuss ideas, investigate particular micro-level issues, and/or shift into foundational abstractions.

I agree. It is much more interesting to be part of intellectual discussions than to be a witness to them. But that’s the point. The intellectual climate is not the public speaking event or the foreign film or the poetry reading or the museum opening. It’s the conversation within the community. Like any good theater, a political speaker can be the starting point for such a conversation, but political discourse in our culture is so anti-intellectual, so resistant to dialogue, that I’m not sure it is a good starting point.

Whenever I start writing on this subject of intellectual climate I keep coming back to the same basic point. A climate is a subtle, organic process. Building and sustaining an intellectual climate on a campus is a difficult task that I imagine most campuses struggle to undertake.  However I am fairly certain a vibrant climate has as little to do with big events as the economy of a city has to do with its hosting a Super Bowl.  Sure, it probably doesn’t hurt, but it’s far from a panacea.

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