The Role of Public Intellectuals in Cooperative Extension 

Jim Langcuster Communications and Marketing Specialist,

Alabama Cooperative Extension System @extensionguy

Anne Mims Adrian Social Media Strategist

Military Families Learning Network-eXtension @aafromaa

Galaxy IVSeptember 2013

#extG4

Neil deGrasse Tyson

One of the nation’s premier public intellectuals

Known for communicating astrophysics concepts in a witty, compelling form and in a way people readily understand

What is a Public Intellectual?

Someone who deals with ideas and knowledge within the context of public discourse, usually within mass media.

What is a Public Intellectual?

Op-ed pieces, magazine columns, Sunday morning network news interview programs, interviewed on public radio/TV.

Social media, an important addition, may be the front door to the mass media presence.

Post Morrill Act Challenges

Overwhelming and ever growing amount of information

Democratization dialogue

Cacophony of voices

User generated content, filters, & distribution

Media mediating human relationships (Mike Welsch)

Individuals are empowered to research and formulate their own opinions

Post Morrill Act Challenges

Fewer people know of Cooperative Extension

A continued need to make ag production more efficient

Public challenges to technological advances in ag is growing

A growing need to make sense of trends and conflicts and misapplied research

Mark Bittman food and cooking writer author of  Cooking at Home with a Four-Star Chef, former The New York Times Columnist.

Charles Blow journalist and visual op-ed columnist for The New York Times. 

David Brooks political and cultural commentator and author of The Social Animal

Erik Brynjolfsson MIT Economics Professor and author of Race Against the Machine and Wired for Innovation.

Gail Collins  journalist, op-ed columnist, blogger, and author of When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present

Maureen Dowd  columnist for The New York Times and best-selling author of Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk

Examples of Public Intellectuals

Thomas L. Friedman journalist, for The New York Times columnist, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of The World Is Flat: 

Paul Krugman Economics Professor at Princeton University, columnist, and author of End This Depression Now!

Andrew McAfee MIT professor, author of Enterprise 2.0 and Race Against the Machine

Andrew Sullivan columnist for The Sunday Times of London and a blogger

Neil deGrasse Tyson  astrophysicist and science communicator Director Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium 

George F . Will newspaper columnist, journalist, and author. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winner 

Examples of Public Intellectuals

Characteristics of #CoopExt Public Intellectuals

Aggregators AND Curators

Providing insights within deeply enriched contexts

Public Intellectuals Bridge the Gap

Traditional Academics as Public Intellectuals?

In The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe, 1987, Jacoby reported that no serious American thinker under the age of 45 was writing for anyone other than academics, or able to.

"Intellectuals who write with vigor and clarity may be as scarce as low rents in New York."

Why Extension as Public Intellectuals?

Have understanding of current scientific models and science

Can bridge the divide between opposing opinions

Articulate the elements of scientific models

Explain importance of science in context

Traits of Public Intellectuals

Scholarly, though not necessarily academic

Highly literate

Articulate with finesse

Passionate

Opinionated

Public Intellectuals

Develop and support spokespersons

Listen and understand debates

Aggregate, curate and make sense

Build reputation for providing value

Be active in online social spaces

Practice disruptive messaging

A Cadre of Public Intellectuals

Social media

Op-ed writers

Effective and compelling speakers

Develop disruptive messaging

Supported (Extension administration and Communication Units) as spokespersons

Moral Obligation as Public Servants

“…no scholar, historian or anyone else is — merely by being a scholar — ethically excused from their own circumstances. We are also participants in our own time and place and cannot retreat from it…”

Tony Judt

Photo Credits

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Neil_deGrasse_Tyson_-_NAC_Nov_2005.jpg http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/Morrill.html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonnygoldstein/3650745193/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/donabelandewen/3584154214/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/quinnanya/3812878415/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mfobrien/3382977725

http://www.flickr.com/photos/skewgee/6092105212/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/its_our_city/2659196522/

The Role of Public Intellectuals in Cooperative Extension by Jim Langcuster and Anne Mims Adrian, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

When using photos from this presentation, please note and adhere to their CC license.