Intellectuals and Academics: What is the Relationship?

We in Kenya live in a society in which titles are over-rated and misapplied, probably because we were colonised by the highly feudal British with their “majesties”, “Dukes”, “duchesses”, “Lords”, “Ladies”, “baronesses” and “Sirs”. In all kinds of contexts (from football matches to funerals, neighbourhood meetings to open air garages among many others), many people want to be addressed as “Professor”, “Doctor”, “engineer”, “Commissioner”, “Bishop”, “Reverend”, among many others. The strange thing is that even the British from whom we learned the hype have moved on, and prefer to work with first names even in contexts in which we would be extremely careful to acknowledge titles. Over thirty years ago, someone who had just graduated with a Ph.D. degree wrote to his contacts, myself included, informing us how he wished for them to address correspondence to him henceforth, with “Dr.” as part of it: I was not impressed at all, although I now realise that correspondence, and particularly addressing postal mail that was dominant in those days, was a very formal affair. A friend recently called me to vent her frustration. She, a professional in her own right, had attended a training curve for pension trustees to hone her skills. Among the trainees were two persons with the title “Professor” and another with the academic title “Doctor”. Yet they were attending the training to be taught, not to teach. However, some of the trainers were dazzled by their titles, and kept on giving them undue attention, holding on to their every word and frequently saying to the class “As Prof. has said, …” and “As Doc has said, …” – and the dons seemed to be enjoying it all the way. As a result, the other trainees were made to feel “small” and their participation less significant than that of the dons. I wholeheartedly agreed with my friend that my dear colleagues, whoever they were, from whatever universities they came, should have borne in mind that they were there to be taught, not to teach, and thus in that context they were equal to all the other trainees; for if they already knew it all they should not have attended as trainees but as trainers. Yet the fawning behaviour of some of those pension trustee trainers is rampant in our society. It is based on the false assumption that those holding the academic titles “Prof.” or “Dr.” are highly knowledgeable and are thus points of reference in every gathering in which they appear. My friend went ahead to wonder if the three academics thought that their titles matched their incomes (a yardstick by which people tragically but frequently measure each other). She pointed out that despite the flamboyance of the three dons, most of the other trainees, working in the private sector, were probably earning more than double the best paid professor in their company. Yet what is really worrying is the failure or outright refusal of such professors and doctors to acknowledge that the positions they hold obligate them to be servants rather than “bosses” of society. What is more, those who shower them with excess admiration are as guilty as they are, for they help reinforce their ill-conceived sense of importance. I sometimes remind people that when someone dies, the maggots never ask who was professor, who doctor, or who sweeper: to them just the arrival of more food. The excessive deference to people holding the academic titles “Prof.” or “Dr.” that made that training curve nightmarish for my friend is partly based on the erroneous view that all intellectuals are academics and all academics are intellectuals. However, things are much more complex than that. How so? The late Prof. Ali Mazrui famously defined an intellectual as “a person who has the capacity to be fascinated by ideas, and has acquired the skill to handle some of them effectively.” While this definition is helpful in highlighting “capacity”, “skill” and “ideas”, it allows people who are not actually active in the processing of ideas to claim to be intellectuals by dint of their “capacity” and “skill”. Thus a person who earned a doctoral degree ten years ago, but who has done close to nothing to keep reading, writing and engaging orally with those around him on the subject of his/her Ph.D. thesis and way beyond it would still fit Mazrui’s definition. Indeed, Prof. Mazrui himself correctly observed that “People can be very intelligent without being actively intellectual. Intellectualism is an engagement in the realm of ideas and rational inquiry.” It is for this reason that I seek to improve Prof. Mazrui’s definition by proposing that an intellectual is anyone who consistently engages deeply with ideas, seeking to understand what they mean, how they relate to one another, and trying to determine the extent of their applicability to real life situations. To do so, one does not need certification from anyone else – one just has to have the ability and interest to pursue knowledge and insight. This means that there are many intellectuals in all manner of places – urban neighbourhoods and rural villages, large and small business outfits, among many others. On the other hand, an academic is someone with post-graduate degrees pursuing a teaching/research career in a university or working in a research institute. Tragically, many of those in such places have been in the academic echo chamber for so long that they genuinely believe that they are the crème de la crème of society by virtue of their degrees and their publications, the waning status of universities in this era of neoliberalism notwithstanding. I was recently discussing this very issue of the relationship between academics and intellectuals with some colleagues, when one of them wondered if academia was not a cult: I replied that it actually is. I pointed out that one of the core elements of a cult is the conviction among its members that "We are the only ones who know and who are right." This is the very attitude which makes many academics believe that there is know intellectual activity outside academia, never mind that most highly influential ideas and innovations were and are still spawned far away from the corridors of universities and research institutes. The fact is that some intellectuals are academics and some are not. Besides, there are many essentially non-intellectuals in academia – people preoccupied with academic activity only so that they can be promoted by their universities. Talk to them about emerging issues such as pandemic politics, enhanced digital surveillance, debates on “climate change”, or the quest for alternative models of governance, and they will exhibit boredom, if not hostility. Happily, there are also academics who understand that the ultimate goal of their learning is service to humanity at large, but this recognition is not limited to academics. Consequently, the concept of the public intellectual is growing in popularity, anchored on the appreciation of the fact that anyone who engages the public in seriously thinking through the pertinent issues of the day fits the bill, whether or not he/she is a career scholar. To be sure, there are situations in which titles are not just permissible but actually appropriate. For example, it would be utterly improper for a master of ceremonies to use first names to refer to the Vice-Chancellor and other dignitaries officiating a graduation ceremony. It would also be improper for students to refer to their lecturers by their first names due to the teacher-student relationship. Besides, in many instances, lecturers are the age of the students’ parents, so in our cultures it would be awkward for such students to refer to them by their first names. Similarly, the “Professor” or “Doctor” titles are relevant when the people holding them are submitting a book proposal to a publisher or bidding for a consultancy because the skills signified by the title are relevant to the matter at hand. However, there is absolutely no reason except an unhealthy ego for such people to require a gentleman who takes care of their home, or their mechanic, or the lady who sells vegetables in their estate to refer to them as “Professor” or “Doctor” because the relationship does not demand it. From the 1970s to the late 1980s, long before the pressures of performance contracting and ISO certification invaded our public institutions, the University of Nairobi, where I am privileged to serve, was well known around the globe for highlighting the fact that intellectual activity is not limited to its corridors, but is also to be found in abundance in our villages. This recognition gave rise to pioneering work in oral literature, oral history and sage (oral) philosophy. Such work only flourishes when the professors and lecturers engage the non-academics all over our country with a demeanour of genuine respect for them instead of tacitly or overtly demanding preferential treatment because of the Western-type certifications that already afford them affluent lifestyles at the expense of the tax-paying masses. Only then will people like my friend at the pension trustee training appreciate that academics have something to offer society.