The public intellectual is an increasingly rare species. I don’t mean academic celebrities with their television series and regular op-ed columns. Public intellectuals are men or women of considerable intellectual attainment, usually professors at the older universities, who are also committed to public service where their wisdom and experience are admired and their judgement sought. Such figures need not be politically neutral; indeed, they may fall out with political leaders who come to dislike their blunt advice, perhaps given in private and public.

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