The Public Intellectual, Service Learning, and Activist Research

Citation
Cushman, Ellen. "The Public Intellectual, Service Learning, and Activist Research." College English vol. 61, no. 3, 1999, pp. 328-336.

Summary
Cushman begins by surveying statements in the October 1997 MLA forum on intellectual work in the 21st-century, on the public role of the intellectual, which demonstrate an increasing pressure for intellectuals to work on/towards political issues. According to Cushman, "[T]hese quotations reveal the nagging suspicion that academics have yet to realize their full potential in contributing to a more just social order. I believe public intellectuals can indeed contribute to a more just social order, but to do so they have to understand 'public' in the broadest sense of the word." (329)

"The kind of public intellectuals I have in mind combine their research, teaching, and service efforts in order to address social issues important to community members in under-served neighborhoods." (329) Cushman contrasts her conception of public against Bourdieu's, who advocates political action that allows for the academics' autonomy and ability to be public; this is important, Cushman acknowledges, but limiting and self-serving. She also contrasts with Michael Berube's definition of the public intellectual, one who makes ideas available to the public, as a way of defending against right-wing critiques of academia being isolated; Cushman's response: "How will this help individuals who have no home, not enough food, or no access to good education? Popularizing scholarship may help solve problems on academe's front lines, but such action does not seem to do democracy any great favors." (329-330) The problem, as Cushman sees it, is that while Berube's notion expands access, it's still relatively confined to an elite social group - readers of New Yorker, for example.

"When public intellectuals not only reach outside the university, but actually interact with the public beyond its walls, they overcome the ivory tower isolation that marks so much current intellectual work. They create knowledge with those whom the knowledge serves. Dovetailing the traditionally separate duties of research, teaching, and service, public intellectuals can use the privilege of their positions to forward the goals of both students and local community members. In doing so, they extend access to the university to a wider community. Academics can reach these goals in two ways: service learning and activist research.

Service Learning
"Service learning asks students (both graduate and undergraduate) to test the merit of what they learn in the university classroom against their experiences as volunteers at local sites such as philanthropic agencies, primary and secondary schools, churches, old-age homes, half-way houses, and shelters." (330) A way of making curriculum incredibly localized, able to fit the situation. The teaching, research, and service all contribute to each other.

Activist Research
A danger of service learning - cultivating an attitude of "liberal savior," in which students/intellectuals see themselves doing missionary work, imparting greater knowledge and skills to the poor and undereducated. Thus, there is a need for service learning to employ activist research methodologies.

"Activist research combines postmodern ethnographic techniques with notions of reciprocity and dialogue to insure reciprocal and mutually beneficial relations among scholars and those with whom knowledge is made. Since a central goal of outreach courses is to make knowledge with individuals, scholars need a methodology that avoids the traditional top-down approaches to ethnographic research." (332)

Praxis research - "Instead of emphasizing observation, research as praxis demands that we actively participate in the community under study. Applied anthropology provides theoretical models for how praxis - loosely definable as ethical action to facilitate social change - enters into the research paradigm, but many scholars still need to do the work of intervention, particularly at the community level." (332) Joining with emancipatory pedagogy, such as Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, extending the pedagogy beyond the classroom. "In order to adapt Freire's pedagogy to the United States, we must also practice it outside the academy, where we can often more easily create solidarity." (332) Freire recognized this need for the local and the difficulty of theorizing, requesting that American educators "not to import" his ideas, but rather to "recreate and rewrite" them. (Compare with Raymie McKerrow, on the local situation of the intellectual that defines what activism looks like?)

Ability to teach literacy without reproducing a school environment, with all of its associations and structural problems.

"If public intellectuals hope to find and generate overlaps between aesthetics and politics, they need to first understand that what they count as art or political choices does not necessarily match what community members count as art or political choices. Because university representatives tend to esteem their own brand of knowledge more than popular forms of knowledge, they deepen the schism between universities and communities." (334) The elite language of academe has subordinated more everyday uses of language to talk about art, politics, and life; "Public intellectuals challenge the value system of academe by starting with the assumption that all language use and ways of knowing are valuable and worthy of respect." (334)