According to Corey Robin in “How Intellectuals Create a Public,” a public intellectual “is writing for an audience that does not yet exist…she is writing for a reader she hopes to bring into being.” It is already hard to write for an existing public, but to write for a public that doesn’t exist yet is harder. This unknown public was the target audience at the MHC Model City Council. We were the public intellectuals trying to create a public for our issues. At the MHC Model City Council, groups were advocating their issues and trying to spread awareness; they were trying to create a public that cares and will take action.

It was interesting to see the other presentations within the same session because we get to see how they can relate to each other. In the Urban Environmentalism session, the pollution/greenhouse gases group mentioned how delivery trucks contribute to greenhouse gases and they made a small reference to our group, Not-so-FreshDirect. The recycling group showed a map of recycling centers and I noticed that one was located in the South Bronx area. From our background research of the South Bronx, it would make sense for a recycling center to be located in the historically industrial area.

Seeing these presentations were insightful and though small, we were able to create publics for our topics and engage the audience.

Throughout this course of this seminar, we’ve read articles and accounts of policies, gentrification and other changes in the community that have occurred against the desire of the community’s inhabitants. We’ve read about social movements that have been established as well as a continuous voice for justice. However, the “intentions” behind these changes are supposedly for the betterment of the communities. So the question arises: who has a voice in creating these policies?

In Angotti’s “From Dislocation to Resistance: The Roots of Community Planning” we read that community members seldom had a say in many of the changes that occurred in their neighborhoods. A key aspect of all our projects, whether it was a mental health initiative or the rezoning of a neighborhood, were assessing how these initiatives impacted the community and how much of a say community members had in the initiative. In “Critical Participatory Action Research as Public Service”, Torre et. al, introduce the concept of critical participatory action research (critical PAR).

Upon reading this chapter, one sentence stood out and really summarized the purpose of critical PAR: “[shifting] the gaze from “what’s wrong with that person” to “what are the policies institutions, and social arrangements that help to form and deform, enrich and limit, human development” and “how do people resist eh weight on injustice in their lives?” Critical PAR is about involving the community in the research, ensuring whatever policies and products result are truly beneficial for the community. Torre et. al provide an extensive history on critical PAR and how community members are evolved.

In critical PAR, there is great emphasis audience participation. To explain this, Torre et. all introduce Poll For Justice (PFJ), a contemporary PAR project which is “designed to examine the extent to which urban youth… experience injustices across sectors of education, criminal justice, and health. It began with a 2 day intensive for young people, university faculty, students, community organizers, and health professionals (175).” Using the expertise and experience of these individuals, the aim was to create a youth survey that can accurately document youth experience across various sectors of the city.

Critical PAR seems to be a promising research method, and a model I hope ThriveNYC and other government initiatives adopt. It’s emphasis on partnering up with the community shows that the outcome of such research is truly beneficial for the community members, and strengthens the bond and trust between the people and the government.

Discussion Question: How can apply this model to existing research and research findings?

The underlying point being stressed in Robin’s article is the importance of an intellectual’s ability to not only present her ideas to a public, but to most crucially, create an enduring public that is currently nonexistent. I found this article quite confusing because of the somewhat philosophical and almost cryptic writing style and explanations. For instance, it is stated that “She never speaks to the reader as he is; she speaks to the reader as he might be. Her common reader in an uncommon reader.” A public intellectual must present novel ideas, which summon a unique public that is interested in getting involved with the intellectual’s core values.

A way in which a public intellectual is able to mobilize a public is by presenting an idea which unifies a group of individuals who were previously not associated with one another. The example provided in the text is that something as simple as shouting, “workers unite!” will subsequently result in the creation of a new public of those interested in this issue. I found this point quite interesting, due to the fact that it asserts that the concept of a “public” is quite malleable and fluid in the fact that “publics” can be created around virtually any idea. Previously, I had believed that the term “public” was a vague term used to simply describe a general group of people or audience. However, this article stresses the fact that there are different “publics” and that it is the intellectual’s job to create new ones through the presentation and deliverance of their ideas.

As an example, one concept introduced in this article is the concept of “liberitarian paternalism”, proposed by a public intellectual, which argues that the state should guide citizens to make better decisions, rather than have them simply argue their own beliefs. The government would essentially push citizens to choose options that would be most beneficial to society. Although this concept seems great on the surface, I feel as if this would be quite a problematic system in practice. For instance, the government’s responsibility to dictate what is “good” would prove to be an issue, due to the fact that the term is subjective. Although I do not entirely agree with the intellectual’s ideologies, I suppose he was definitely successful in creating a public, due to his beliefs’ ability to stratify and therefore, establish “publics” based on peoples’ opinions of his ideas.

As for the future of public intellectuals, the article states that they currently fail at creating a public since they simply rely on speaking to audiences that already exist. However, Robin stresses the importance of public intellectuals in society. If there are no public intellectuals, new publics will not be created, which will hinder the intellectual growth of society.

Question: Will public intellectuals of the future be able to mobilize new publics or has this trend died off forever?