Public Intellectuals

Inspired by the 1993 Parliament of the World's Religions, this volume for the first time brings the scholarly discipline of comparative religious ethics into constructive collaboration with the community of interreligious dialogue. The contributors draw from both communities of discourse in addressing questions of method & theory & global moral issues-such as human rights, distributive justice, politics of war, international business, the environment, & genocide-in a cross-cultural context.

The essays in this volume explore the educational implications of unsettling shifts in politics, economics, popular culture, & social theory associated with postmodernism. These shifts, the authors suggest, are deeply contradictory & may lead in divergent political directions-some of them quite dangerous.

"A useful guide to critical pedagogy in general, & to the work of Giroux in particular." Choice "Traces the evolution of Henry Giroux's ongoing piercing analysis of the crises in education & democracy. At a time when solutions to complex social problems are arrived at in too great haste & with little theoretical foundation, Giroux reminds us how important ethics & morality are to all aspects of democratic life. This is an essential book for those working in education & all aspects of cultural studies." Carol Becker The Art Institute of Chicago

Henry A. Giroux challenges the contemporary politics of cynicism by addressing a number of issues including the various attacks on cultural politics, the multicultural discourses of academia, the corporate attack on higher education, and the cultural politics of the Disney empire.

In The End of Utopia, noted social critic and historian Russell Jacoby takes a sobering look at the future of politics and does not like what he sees. Jacoby points to the abandonment of utopian ideals that once sustained dissent and movements of social change; and he calls for writers and critics to reclaim a vision and backbone they are losing.

Neither American history nor American society anticipated, sanctioned, or encouraged the development of either Black intellectuals or a Black middle class. Both emerged and developed against horrendous obstacles and both are great achievements. Both were sanctioned and given moral direction by the American Negro Academy, an organization founded in 1897 by Alexander Crummell, W.E.B. Du Bois, Francis Grimke, and others for the purpose of organizing Black intellectuals to defend and redeem Blacks, through intellectual, artistic, and scientific achievements in the face of racist detractors, and to help the Black middle class develop as the leadership class of Black America. Black intellectuals have had a difficult time fulfilling a leadership role, partly because they have failed to remember the three cultural heritages of Black people: Black, African, and Euro-American. The times demand that Black intellectuals approach themselves and their world from all three cultural perspectives, for the sake ofBlack people and for the sake of America, both of which desperately need their leadership.