These discussions on Friday led into a general debate over the term "public intellectual" itself, loosely moderated by Larry Friedman in the spare time available. Daniel Geary argued that Russell Jacoby's term may be essentially redundant, since the intellectual is necessarily a figure engaged in public rather than esoteric concerns. Alan Petigny disagreed, arguing that the adjective public serves a useful purpose in distinguishing the politically or socially active thinker from other kinds of scholars. Ben Wurgaft, on the other hand, suggested that it might be helpful not to think of the public intellectual as a figure so much as an event -- a certain kind of emergent public transformation.
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