By – Amlan Baisya, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Literature and Languages,
Easwari School of Liberal Arts, SRM University–AP
Traditionally, a university classroom is meant to be a space where ideas are tested, unsettled, and reimagined.
A student begins to respond to a question—tentatively at first, then with growing conviction. She is about to disagree with a dominant interpretation, perhaps even with the teacher. There is a brief pause. She recalibrates mid-sentence: “Maybe I’m wrong.” The thought is softened, diluted, made acceptable. The discussion moves on.
Nothing dramatic has occurred. And yet, something essential has been lost.
That hesitation– the instinct to withdraw, to qualify, to self-censor– is not confined to the classroom. It is symptomatic of a wider intellectual climate in which the risks of speaking have begun to outweigh the responsibilities of thinking. If the classroom once served as the training ground for critical public engagement, its growing caution offers an unsettling clue to a larger phenomenon: the gradual disappearance of the public intellectual.
This is not to suggest that intellectuals have vanished altogether. Universities continue to produce scholarship, and experts continue to comment on public issues. What has diminished, however, is the public dimension of intellectual life– the willingness, and increasingly the ability, to engage critically with society in ways that are visible, sustained, and consequential.
The reasons for this shift are neither singular nor accidental. They lie at the intersection of political pressures, institutional transformations, and the changing economy of knowledge. At the institutional level, universities have undergone a significant reorientation. The contemporary academic environment is structured by metrics– publications, citations, rankings–that privilege measurable output over public engagement. While these indicators serve certain legitimate purposes, they also reshape intellectual priorities. Writing for a general audience, participating in public debate, or engaging with non-academic communities is rarely rewarded within formal evaluation systems. The intellectual, in effect, is encouraged to speak to peers rather than to the public.
This transformation is not ideologically neutral. It reflects a broader shift towards what may be described as the instrumentalization of education. The National Education Policy 2020, while framed as a progressive reform, exemplifies this tension. Its emphasis on performative flexibility, interdisciplinarity, and innovation is accompanied by a persistent focus on employability, skills, and global competitiveness. These are not insignificant concerns.
However, when they become the dominant metrics of educational value, they risk subordinating the critical and humanistic functions of the university. The humanities and social sciences– traditionally the domains from which public intellectuals emerge– find themselves in a precarious position. Their contributions are less easily quantifiable, their outputs less immediately marketable. As funding priorities shift and institutional incentives align with economic returns, these disciplines are subtly marginalised. The question that
begins to organise educational policy is not “What should we understand?” but “What can be optimised?” In such a framework, the public intellectual appears increasingly redundant.
The consequences of this shift are compounded by the broader political climate. Public discourse in India has become more polarised, with a discernible narrowing of the space available for critical dissent. Intellectuals who engage in sustained critique of dominant narratives often encounter resistance that is not merely argumentative but punitive– ranging from public vilification to institutional marginalisation. The cost of speaking has risen, and with it, the temptation to remain silent.
Here, the insights of Edward Said remain instructive. Said characterised the intellectual as one who is compelled to “speak truth to power,” even at personal risk. Such a role presupposes not only individual courage but also institutional and cultural conditions that
make dissent possible. When these conditions erode, the intellectual is gradually transformed into a specialist– competent within a domain, but disengaged from the public sphere.
The erosion is not merely external; it is also internalised. The contemporary academic is increasingly trained to value methodological rigour over public engagement, neutrality over intervention. While these virtues are not without merit, they can, in excess, produce a form of intellectual reticence. To speak publicly is to risk simplification, misinterpretation, and controversy. It requires a willingness to translate complex ideas without diluting them, to
engage audiences that may not share one’s assumptions, and to accept that knowledge, once public, becomes contested.
Not all scholars are prepared– or incentivised or motivated– to undertake this labour.
The media landscape further complicates this dynamic. Digital platforms have expanded the reach of public discourse, but they have also altered its tempo and texture. The logic of virality privileges immediacy over reflection, assertion over argument. In such an environment, the slow, careful reasoning that characterises intellectual work struggles to find traction. Visibility is no longer synonymous with depth; in many cases, it is inversely related to it.
As Zygmunt Bauman observed in his reflections on “liquid modernity,” contemporary life is marked by flux, uncertainty, and the dissolution of stable frameworks. In such a context, the role of the intellectual is not to provide definitive answers, but to sustain critical inquiry. Yet, the very conditions that make this role necessary also render it precarious.
Why, then, does the disappearance of public intellectuals matter?
It matters because democratic societies require more than procedural mechanisms; they require spaces of critical reflection. They depend on individuals who can interrogate dominant assumptions, articulate alternative visions, and hold power to account. Without such figures, public discourse risks becoming either technocratic– reduced to administrative problem-solving– or populist– driven by sentiment rather than reasoned argument. In the Indian HE context, this absence is particularly consequential. Questions of caste, gender, language, and development are not merely technical issues; they are deeply embedded in historical and structural inequalities. To address them meaningfully requires more than data; it requires interpretation, critique, and ethical engagement. The public intellectual occupies precisely this space– between knowledge and judgement, between analysis and intervention.
If that space contracts, the quality of public reasoning diminishes. The classroom, in this sense, is not incidental to the problem; it is foundational. When students learn, implicitly or explicitly, that certain questions are better left unasked, that disagreement must be carefully managed, that intellectual risk carries disproportionate consequences, they are being prepared not for public engagement, but for cautious conformity. The hesitant voice in the classroom becomes the absent voice in the public sphere.
Educational policy must, therefore, resist the reduction of learning to employability. While economic imperatives are unavoidable, they cannot be the sole measure of educational success. The cultivation of critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and communicative clarity must remain central. Without these, education risks producing technically competent individuals who are intellectually disengaged.
Indian HE system must perform a renewed commitment to the conditions that make dissent possible. Academic freedom is not an abstract ideal; it is the precondition for intellectual life. Without it, the public intellectual cannot exist.
A society that does not cultivate its public intellectuals does not merely lose a category of thinkers. It loses the capacity to think in public.
