Guest post by Ag.

The Greek philosopher Plato (428/427-347 BC) is perhaps most famous for his suggestion in The Republic that the ideal political community ought to be ruled by philosopher-kings. This is somewhat of a shame because it obscures the fact that Plato never intended philosopher rule to be a practical political reality. The point of The Republic is really a “politics of the soul” and the long analogy between the internal structures of the community and those of the individual psyche are meant to illuminate the latter and to point the way for individuals to live a worthwhile life. As Socrates remarks at the end of the ninth book, it does not matter whether the ideal state ever comes into existence, because its primary purpose is to serve as a moral guide for individuals whatever political community they reside in (a notion taken up again in later times as the “City of God”). So the idea that Plato is promoting some sort of philosophical dictatorship is simply misguided, and the continuing promulgation of this interpretation likely has more to do with the desires of Plato’s utopian-minded readers than it does to the content of his writings (interested readers may wish to consult The Laws, where Plato offers a much more pragmatic political program).

However, The Republic does have a powerful political message in its definition of civic justice. Justice, as defined by Plato is “to ta hautou prattein”, which literally means “doing one’s own things” or “doing one’s own job” and refraining from meddling in the jobs of others. The main idea behind this is a simple commitment to efficiency. Given a certain number of tasks that need to be accomplished in a society, we will all be better off if people are assigned these tasks based on their aptitude for them. People often react to this idea with horror because it seems as if people will be shoehorned into jobs that they do not like at the whim of other people. However, the market system does much the same thing in allocating labour in our society. I might wish to be a carpenter or a famous rock and roll singer, but if I am no good at it, I am unlikely to be successful and will have to find some other job. Moreover, our schooling system is in large part designed to detect the natural aptitudes of students so as to guide them into careers that suit their natural talents (full disclosure: I failed at both woodwork and music). It turns out that any society that recognizes the necessity of specialization and which is committed to efficient allocation of labour resources is going to have to find some mechanism that promotes Plato’s broad conception of civic justice.

The flip side of this commitment to specialization is that it is going to be inefficient for people to meddle in the affairs of others. Specialization means that many people in society will have forms of expertise that I am in no position to make judgements about. In fact, the existence of any moderately complex society will mean that no one person will ever be in the position of being able to render judgement on most of the work of others. The existence of a massively complex society like ours means that even the best informed person will be competent to judge in only a few small areas of expertise. This is the case even in the modern academy, since the last person popularly supposed to have had the command of all western learning was Gottfried Wilhlem von Leibniz, who died nearly 300 years ago.

Now it is clear that modern democratic societies do not entertain the possibility that political rule is a task in which experts should have complete authority, a supposition which if false would naturally lead to something like the philosopher-kings of Plato’s Kallipolis. If we agree with the democratic tradition, then there will obviously be no specifically political paternalism. Yet it is clearly the case that expertise is assumed in most other classes of human affairs, and that the price of wholesale rejection of it would return us to a pre-industrial society (which to be fair, some in the anarchist movement think is actually desirable).

I take it as given that only a small minority of human beings would wish to return to such a pre-industrial state, and if that is the case, then all of us have to accept that we are simply going to have to trust the experts in most cases. In particular, there will be cases where it is impossible for the community at large to make an informed judgement on a non-political matter that has obvious political import. So there are going to be issues where some sort of paternalism is unavoidable. Climate change is just such an issue. People who demand a full explanation from climate scientists underestimate the amount of work and time that it takes to become a climate expert. In fact, it would take a significant amount of time and effort simply to be able to have a good grasp of the science, let alone to become a genuine expert. I freely admit in my own case, and I think most others should, that even if the science were explained to us in the most favourable terms, that we are not competent to make a judgement about it. The idea that all specialists should seek genuinely informed public consent is therefore ludicrous because it simply can’t be done without making the entire population do graduate work in climate science, and that would involve giving up on specialization, which is of course unacceptable. To ask climate scientists or any other expert to properly justify their conclusions to the laity is an act of considerable hubris, and should be seen as such, because you just can’t make it work.

The obvious pitfall with the rule of expertise is that the experts may collude in their own interests against the community at large, and, as we are all aware, this is what climate scientists are regularly being accused of when it comes to the issue of climate change. Fortunately, we have long known how to minimize such risks without having to do PhDs ourselves. The universally favoured solution is to institute a competition and reward system among the experts to prevent such collusion. In other words, we set them at each others’ throats so they won’t suck at ours. That is why in science there are always great rewards available to the scientist who manages to disprove the current orthodoxy. Academic freedom and peer review are part of this, but there is of course no perfect system. So it is always remotely possible for a group of experts to collude and that is simply a risk we must take in order to secure the public benefits of specialist expertise.

Now I want to take an example from popular media in order to show how our current culture is ill-suited to dealing with problems like climate change. I am sure that everyone is familiar with stories that pit a “scientific rebel” against the “establishment consensus”. In fact, it is hard to think of a movie about science that does not involve this hackneyed plot device. The rebel has some “hunch” that the establishment is wrong, and after many years of struggle is eventually vindicated. Usually the vindication is (implausibly) accompanied by the (male) protagonist winning the affections of a spectacularly well-endowed and submissive female, which of course serves to reinforce the desirability of questioning authority and consensus in our male-dominated culture, as well as to (justifiably) raise the ire of feminists.

I do not wish to suggest that scientific progress does not sometimes or even often proceed like this (although I am sceptical of the implied sexual rewards having met many scientists’ wives). The problem with this story is of course that it is a story of exceptions. Most challenges to scientific orthodoxy fail, yet our society is so enamoured of individual success stories that it ignores this fact and tends to glorify dissident views purely because they involve dissent. The same plot device occurs in movies about successful business people. For example, the movie “Pirates of Silicon Valley” tells the more or less true story of the role of the founders of the Microsoft and Apple corporations in the origin of personal computing. Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs made a fortune simply by hoping that ordinary people would want to use computers (a memorable scene in the movie occurs when Wozniak presents his prototype PC to his employers at Hewlett-Packard, only for it to be ridiculed because ordinary people would “never” have a use for computers). What we don’t see in the movie are the hundreds of computer companies with different schemes that failed, even though they were also “innovative rebels” who challenged the “IBM monolith” in various ways. Hindsight is 20/20 and most people who had money to invest in 1977 had no way of knowing which of these rebel companies would succeed and which would fail, or indeed if any of them would succeed. So when Hewlett-Packard rejects personal computing, we are supposed to take them as having been stupid and shortsighted. But they were not, because it was entirely reasonable for Hewlett-Packard to reject the idea of personal computing given the state of the industry at the time. Technology companies like HP are constantly being offered many radical ideas and the vast majority of them are non-starters. When one of these bad ideas gets adopted, we all laugh at the spectcular failure and condemn the company involved. We forget that if Hewlett-Packard had taken up all the ideas it was offered, it would have bankrupted the company in very little time. HP simply had no way of knowing which of these radical ideas were going to work in the long run, and that is quite normal. In short, the rational decision is in some cases ultimately the wrong one, but that does not mean that irrationality is good practice.

Similarly, those who ask us to be sceptical of the scientific consensus on climate change because it may be wrong, are asking us to do something irrational. The consensus on climate change may well be wrong, but most of us are in no position to make such a judgement and never will be. All we can do is trust the consensus among those who we have employed to research the issue. If the consensus is overturned, it will be very likely because of work done by some other expert, yet the vast majority of us will not be in a position to judge that either. Even other scientists are not in a much better position to judge than the rest of us, since science is itself heavily specialized (hence the inherent silliness of many “I have a degree in physics and I think the climate consensus is wrong” posts – you might as well get the world’s greengrocers to unite against it). In the end, climate change denial is nothing more than a conspiracy theory implicating the majority of the world’s climate scientists. Yet when was the last time you saw a movie about a conspiracy theory where the conspiracy turned out not to exist? Compare that with how many conspiracy theories turn out to be true, and you will have your answer.

So while it goes against almost everything that popular culture tells us, most of us are better off simply trusting the expert consensus. All we can do is make sure that a working structure of incentives is set up to encourage the experts to be critical of each others’ work. This in the end is why amateur climate sceptics are silly, and our cultural indulgence of them is dangerous.

So what does this have to do with Plato? Well, Plato was the first to demonstrate how any economically sophisticated society relies on expertise. While he has been condemned for his musings on political expertise, it is ridiculous to think, for the reasons given above, that he is not correct about other kinds of expertise. Therefore, since other kinds of expertise will on some occasions spill over into the political realm, it follows that a condition of living in a modern society is that we have to accept a great deal of paternalism in matters concerning specialist expertise. But that isn’t so bad, because everyone is in the same boat. Climate scientists may be the authorities on the climate, but they have to submit to authorities on medicine, and so on.

So should we abandon democracy? Of course not. But what we should do is recognize the only kind of democracy that is plausible. A wholly anti-paternalist democracy, based on the idea of majority informed consent is silly, because most of us will never be sufficiently informed to make competent decisions. A democracy based on majority informed consent will be a democracy of mud hut dwellers. There will of course be many expert rulings that people can happily ignore whilst harming only themselves (like smoking in private), but climate change is obviously not like that, since it is an issue of global concern, and in cases like these (and a wide variety of others, including vaccination programs) paternalism is not only justifiable, but it would be difficult to see how we could do without it. We literally have no choice but to allow various experts to make choices on our behalf in many areas of our lives.

The correct role of democracy is to ensure openness and protect against conspiracies of experts by ensuring that systems are in place that prevent expert collusion as much as possible. In the end that is all that democracy can do and all that it should do. But this is, of necessity, a democracy that does not usurp the consensus of experts, rather it simply regulates the social system in which scientific expertise is channeled for the public good. This is especially important when we think what would happen if some people had their way and every important decision a society faced was decided by popular referendum.

In the end, Plato was correct. Paternalism is a necessary feature of an advanced society and one that we all benefit from. Childish anti-paternalism will get us absolutely nowhere, but in the end that is all that most climate change denial boils down to, and the only reason it gets airtime is that our popular culture has been obsessed with it for the last 50 years.

I was not going to post on the Witi Ihimaera plagarism scandal, having commented under my own name on another blog that covered the matter. But as I compare my summary dismissal for writing a rude email to an unqualified and underperforming student with the lack of even a cursory reprimand for his theft of intellectual property, and then find out that apparently it is not the first time that Mr. Ihimaera has appropriated someone else’s work as his own, I find myself wondering if indeed there is a double standard at play when it comes to our respective treatment by my former employer. Let me explain why, but first point to the one consistency in the handling of both cases.

The University has, as part of its collective contract with the union representing academic staff, a series of procedures and regulations that have to be followed before an academic staff member can be dismissed for serious misconduct. This includes receiving a formal complaint detailing the misconduct, attempting to mediate the matter using the offices of the Ombudsman, handling the matter within the department, issuing two formal written warnings before dismissal is sought…the requirements are pretty detailed and in fact were made even more so after my dismissal precisely because of the controversy surrounding it. Perhaps Mr. Ihimaera is not a member of the union so other procedures were followed, but that usually mitigates against favorable resolution for the employee.

In my case none of the internal procedures were honoured other than as a facade. No formal written complaint was ever made against me, but without getting my side of the story the Ombuds(person) immediately brought the issue to the attention of my department HOD, who without saying a word to me passed it on to the Dean, who after consulting with the student as to what should be done held a series of brief meetings with me and a union rep in which he shrugged off my apologies and assurances, ignored the fact I had no prior formal warnings, and sent me packing. In fact, he and his HR advisors attempted to use a couple of unrelated events from the past (an argument with a former HOD about managerial practices and an email disagreement with a colleague about a grad student who failed to attend a class) to argue that prior warnings had been given. Those were later found to be irrelevant by the ERA.

In Mr. Ihimaera’s case it appears that, upon hearing that news of the plagarism was about to go public, the University rapidly pushed through an “investigation” of the matter apparently involving his HOD, the new Dean of Arts (who was not the Dean the fired me) and Mr. Ihimaera. No disciplinary board with colleagues outside of the HoD and Dean was apparently convened. Mr. Itimaera  gave apologies and assurances, and the case was closed.

What is consistent in both cases is that the lengthy rules and procedures for handling discipline cases involving academics were circumvented, in his case favourably to him and in my case not. This galls me not because I think that Mr. Ihimaera should be fired–I do not, and think that both of us should have received a final written reprimand about our respective transgressions–but because the University argued that I was fired because of the damage I did to its reputation. This line of argument continued after the dismissal was found to be unjustified, then into the settlement agreement by which formal reinstatement meant no actual reinstatement. But what about my reputation? Not only did the leaked email wind up on the front page of the national newspaper and then went global, but the University did nothing to prevent its release or demand its withdrawal when a student newspaper under its authority first published it (even though leaking the email was a violation of the email policy under which I was ostensibly fired). Moreover, the University knew well what the impact of the dismissal would be. As the Dean who fired me said to the ERA, “in a reputation-based business like academia, summary dismissal essentially means the end of a career.” In my case that seems to be proving true, and perhaps it was that knowledge that made for lighter treatment for Mr. Ihimaera–but I suspect not, simply because his association with academia was one of mutual convenience rather than professional necessity.

My major question is, if what I did was so injurious to the University reputation, what about Mr. Ihimaera’s plagarism? Plagarism is the single worst thing that an academic can do. Working in a genre such as historical fiction does not excuse the lifting of other’s words. Plus, being housed within an academic institution means adhering to its requirements on original work, so he was, in fact, more duty bound than independent writers in that regard. Students get failed and often expelled for plagarism. Academic staff get demoted or fired for plagarism. And Mr Ihimaera did not even merit a reprimand? Now, it seems that the case gets worse, as others have come forth to claim that Mr. Ihimaera has plagarised in his previous work. If so, and if the University knew about those previous incidents, then its absolution of the latest episode is even more alarming.

The University and Mr. Ihimaera say that his plagarism was “inadvertent” and thus excusable. Even if that were true–and it stretches credulity to think that a famous author would not know the difference between his own words and sentence structure and those of others– standard guidelines on plagarism, including those specifically used and distributed by the University to students and staff, state that inadvertent or unknowing plagarism is no excuse for it. It is the author’s responsibility to ensure his/her work is original and properly cited, and the crosses all academic fields and intellectual genres.

Some have claimed that because Mr. Ihimaera is Maori, famous and gay, he got off lightly. I initially thought that was ludicrous and that there were other mitigating circumstances at play. But the more I learn about the case and think about the differences in our treatment, the more I wonder as to why those differences. Certainly universal institutional standards need to be upheld over and above the specific identity and interests of any individual. That is what the University claimed in my case. Yet, was what I did worse than plagarism? Did my email to an individual student cause more damage to the University than the discovery by a book reviewer in a national magazine of the as of then unattributed passages in Mr. Ihimaera’s latest book? How can he not even receive a reprimand, and how can the University claim that in both cases its standard rules and procedures were followed to the letter?

The real shame is that it is not my actions or Mr. Ihimaera’s that have tainted the reputation of the University. Instead, it is playing loose with the rules and attempts to “spin” both stories in a way that gives the illusion of procedures being properly followed that sullies the brand. That has a negative impact not only on the managerial cadre that are the perpetrators of the double standard but also the staff, alumni, current and prospective students who share association with the University name. Yet, instead of being ashamed and contrite, University managers continue to obfuscate and bluster, refusing to reveal how their “investigation” of the Ihimaera case was conducted citing privacy concerns (concerns they were not so concerned about when my email went public).  It appears that management are blissfully unaware that the ship is sinking beneath them or else are confident that no matter what they do, they will not be held to account by anyone other than themselves. Since the taxpayers ultimately pay the salaries of all involved, that should be a matter of public interest.

In the shadows of chain-store ghost towns
Where no-one walks the streets at night
A silent nation, hooked on medication
Stares into a blue flickering light.
– Calexico, Service and Repair

This verse has been on my mind rather a lot since moving to my new exurb (it’s not quite a chain-store ghost town, although there sure is one of every chain store here.) But it’s the second pair of lines I’ve dwelt most upon; a potent image of Brave New World escapism as a substitute for real-life engagement, a soma-ed out populace who’ll take what it’s given.* This is a fashionable refrain in postmodern affluent liberal polities: democracy is being undermined by apathy, generated by those who would prefer you didn’t engage in politics at all so they can just get on with running the world without pesky peons interfering.

Political engagement in NZ is fairly weak and superficial, and that is bad for democratic politics. Engagement with and understanding of both the function and the presentation of political process is critical sustenance for democracy; but note, it must be with both the function and the presentation. It can be active (marches, submissions, donations, party membership, etc.) or passive (caring about the news, writing letters-to-the-editor, talkback, bloggery, heated discussions at the pub).

Both are important. In a political network model of concentric circles, a party’s leadership is surrounded by a wider group of insiders, cadres, activists, lobbyists and so forth, surrounded in turn by the party’s wider electorate. Organised political activity will only ever be the domain of a relative few, whom we might call second-circle elites; those who are involved in the political process but who do not drive it. The major role of these second-circle elites is to act as intermediary between the first and third circles; to channel information from the electorate to the leadership and to spread politics out to the electorate. These two functions (in and out) are very different; the former involves constant, frank and honest self-appraisal, a critical assessment function which must be independent from the proselytising imperative. The latter is the proselytising imperative; it requires faith and focus and adherence to doctrine and discipline.

When the feedback loop breaks down and information is fed out but not back in, a political movement becomes hijacked by its elite base — as if the second circle can somehow substitute for the third circle, as if burning desire among a few people can somehow substitute for smouldering will among a much larger number, in apparent ignorance of the fact that votes are not distributed on the basis of intensity of feeling. Ultimately the role of second-circle elites is to promote engagement between the first and third, and where apathy reigns in a polity, it is generally due to their failure to adequately perform those gatekeeping, proselytising and critical assessment functions. But second-circle elites all too frequently blame the electorate for these failures. Often, as in NZ at present, this leads to them decrying ‘politics by focus group’ or ‘pandering to the masses’ as defence of their own ‘principled’ or ‘just plain right’ positions; a view which scorns and patronises the electorate. Often, this position is combined with the grudging acknowledgement that the masses do in fact have all the votes and must therefore be ‘pandered to’ in order to gain sufficient support to prosecute a political agenda which may or may not resemble the agenda campaigned upon. This elite-centred view of politics kills engagement and increases apathy among non-elites, and results in the self-fulfilling prophecy that the unwashed hordes make poor political decisions — they often do, because they often don’t get what they vote for and didn’t have much of a hand in defining it anyhow.

But although the elites might sneer, engagement among the so-called silent majority is highly valuable, and the number of their votes is the least part of their importance. Their scrutiny of political events, policy and discourse may not be so intense, but it is broader and more stable. Even a moderate degree of political and media literacy among a wide section of the electorate provides a valuable check on how much government, its delegated authorities, lobbyists and other political actors can get away with, raising the bar of political action and discourse and providing a check that a high degree of literacy among a small second-circle elite can never provide. This is simply the wisdom of crowds.

Political movements need to decide whether their main priority is to agitate their own partisan lines for short-term electoral gain and alienate those segments with whom they disagree, or to build a democratic infrastructure of engagement and literacy in the polity in the knowledge that greater engegament and literacy will pay dividends. Or, to put it another way, political movements need to decide how much of the one they are prepared to sacrifice to the other. It’s a tricky balance, and I don’t mean to suggest it’s a precise zero-sum tradeoff, but the project of building democratic literacy and engagement is not usually compatible with a partisan agenda, and this means accepting that some proselytisation opportunities will be missed. But if the core problem is a low standard of political action and discourse in the polity, and the imperative is to drive up the quality of political action and discourse by increasing polity-level political and media literacy, then the strategic job of the agitators should be to promote political literacy above all else; even to the partial exclusion of short-term partisan gains. In my view, too much has been sacrificed to the electoral cycle; that the government so often gets away with the ‘nine long years’ gambit, itself a propaganda device to deflect attention from some policy failure or unappealing priority decision, indicates the failure of this imperative.

The NZ electorate is not entirely unengaged, though the standard of that engagement is quite low. There have been a number of catalytic issues in recent years which have made people sit up and care about politics: the Orewa Speech, the Foreshore and Seabed Act, the Electoral Finance Act, the s59 repeal; the h debate are a few which spring readily to my mind. Most of these were created by the right for largely partisan reasons, realising that engagement was a way of taking the political initiative. It is critical to note here that engagement is not the same as literacy, but that it can lead to literacy in the long term if properly managed. While the iwi/kiwi debate and the smacking debate and so on generated much heat and little light, they provide an illustration that political activism isn’t quite hunched before the TV screen with a beer in one hand and a remote control in the other. What’s needed is a cultural change in NZ democratic politics; issues that the polity cares about, politicians who are responsive to those issues, and elites who are committed first and foremost to raising these issues and sustaining the discourse betwen the first and second circles for the good of democratic politics rather than strictly for partisan gain.

Crowdsourcing politics for democracy’s sake is preventative maintenance. It’s well overdue.

L

* Really, what will we do now that NZ’s Next Top Model has been cancelled?

One thing that is striking about the tone of contemporary public policy debates in NZ is the absence of intellectuals. Although various academics are trotted out by the media to give sound bites and opinion based on their supposed “expertise” in given subject areas, they otherwise do not loom large in the national conversation on issues of policy. Likewise, activists and partisans of various stripes make their views known on a number of fronts, but their contributions are notable more for their zeal than their intellectual weight. So, what happened to NZ’s public intellectuals, or perhaps better said, has there ever been a real tradition of public intellectuals in Aotearoa?

I ask this because as a relative newcomer to the country (arrived in 1997), I may have witnessed the passing from the public eye of the final generation of public intellectuals. People like Andrew Sharp, Bruce Jesson, Barry Gustafson (who is retired by active), Michael King–their likes are no longer seen in policy debates, and there does not appear to be another generation of intellectuals emerging to replace them. Moreover, due to my ignorance of NZ intellectual history, I remain unsure if theirs was the only generation of scholars who had an impact on public life, or if they are the final generation in a tradition that extends back to pre-colonial days.

To be sure, the likes of Jane Kelsey, Brian Easton (who, if from that previous generation is still alive and involved in contemporary debates), Gareth Morgan, Ranginui Walker, Sandra Coney, Ian Wedde, perhaps Chris Trotter (who is prolific if not consistent in his views) continue to agitate for their causes. Various bloggers have made their mark on public discourse, and Maori luminaries interject their insights into discussions of tangata whenua and tino rangatiratanga. But it appears that there is an anti-intellectual bias deeply ingrained in NZ society, one that has its origins in the much celebrated egalitarian ethos of the country, but which is now reinforced by the corporate media disposition to sell teenage pop fodder, “infotainment,” culturally vacuous “reality” shows and sports instead of providing even a minimum of in-depth news, analysis and debate. Although there are evening and weekend segments dedicated to public affairs on major media outlets and plenty of talkback options in which opinions are voiced, those that feature them are dominated by policy dilettantes or, worse yet, journalists, society celebrities or ex-politicians talking to each other (in a version of the Fox News syndrome of mutual self-promotion via staged interviews on personality-driven shows). There is even an academic version of this, in which individuals who are purported experts in “media studies” are brought out to pontificate on how media covers politics and social issues. No need to consult those that actual work in these subject areas–all that is required for public consumption is someone who looks at how the media covers how sociologists, economists and political scientists track issues of policy.  That is enough to make definitive judgements on the matters of the day. Add to this the fact that many media guest talking heads are paid for their appearances, or if not, wish to keep their mugs on the society pages, and what passes for informed public scrutiny of policy cause and consequence is nothing more than a collection of glib retorts and one-liners. This is the media equivalent of comfort food.

The pandering syndrome has infected the political classes. Personal image and party “brand” is more important than substance. Market research drives approaches to policy. And nowhere is their an intellectual in sight to serve as critic and conscience of society. Instead, “opinionaters” from all parts of the political spectrum pass shallow retrospective judgement on matters of import, and in the measure that they do so they rapidly fade from the front lines of  the degraded public debates. Small wonder that political debates often tend towards the banal and trivial.

I am therefore curious as to whether there has ever been a robust tradition of public intellectuals in NZ, and if so, why has it all but disappeared? The 2007 book Speaking Truth to Power (Auckland University Press) decried the dearth of public intellectuals, and the situation appears to have gotten worse since then (good reviews of the book can be found here:  http://www.listener.co.nz/issue/3493/artsbooks/8641/that_thinking_feeling.html; and here: http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/features/feature-archive/163908/Smart-thinking-NZs-public-intellectuals).>>Sorry, I am having trouble placing the links in shorter format<<

The word “intellectual” itself has become a focus for ridicule and derision, and professions in which intellectual labour is the norm are denigrated as the province of losers who otherwise could not get a “real” job (hence the tired saw that “those that do, do, and those than don’t, teach”). This is odd because in other societies intellectual labour is valued intrinsically, and in NZ there has been at least rhetorical championing of the move towards a higher level of public discourse. What happened to the “knowledge economy” and the effort to turn NZ into a value-added, innovation-based manufacturing platform? Is there no role for public intellectuals in that project, to say nothing of more lofty efforts to argue and impart a normative as well as positive theoretical framework for the ongoing betterment of Kiwi society? Are intellectuals indeed just pointy-headed bludgers ruminating about how many angels can fit on the end of a pin from the obscurity of their ivory towers and smoke-filled staff rooms? Or is there something amiss in the larger society that denies them a public role?

I shall leave the answers to you.