Cushman believes that the definition of "public" in the term "public intellectual" can be problematic because it is often unrepresentative of an actual public, and is often used to describe a more privileged class of citizens. She holds that using traditional methods of anthropological, observation-based research serves only to inform an already educated and well-off demographic about the problems of the world without actually helping to make any changes for those who need it most. She argues that the best way to remedy this is to switch to a perspective that allows for engagement or interaction within the community requiring assistance. This way, she says, both the community and the public intellectual will benefit from a mutual exchange of knowledge. Through service learning at the university level, as well as activist research, Cushman believes students, professors, and community organizations will see more meaningful socio-political action taking place by learning to "work together to identify and ameliorate local-level social issues" (334). Outreach courses promoting such values will find that they no longer "deepen the schism between universities and communities" to the same degree as those promoting more traditional values.
I have a feeling Tom Kerr is going to be speaking in class about the prison correspondence project he led last spring in our Argument class, so I will add to that during discussion. =)
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