[hacksnewer]

This is a very HN way of looking at academia. The vast majority of academics aren't looking to be "public", they quietly do great work for decades, passing their knowledge down to their students. You don't hear about them because their main job is to educate not bloviate.

Not saying Graber does this, but there are academics (I can think of a Canadian professor) who are very much "public intellectuals" but whose entire career is popular due to controversy. Is that person educating or is he leading a social movement? I guess that's up for debate, but that's hwy people know who he is, not because of great work.

[socialdemocrat]

Very different perspective from the debate here in Norway . Here is is seen more as a duty of academics to engage with the public and a push to get them to do that more. What value is knowledge if it is not known? We live in a media world increasingly dominated by quacks and pseudo science. The need for real experts to make themselves heard is bigger than ever.

Thus at least hear in Norway the academics who popularized knowledge and engage with the public are celebrated. Politicians have started to put more pressure on academics to speak up.

I know from a mother who was a life long journalist that it was always very hard to get experts to talk to media. They are so focused on a level of accuracy and formality that often is entirely unsuitable to address the public at large. But that does not mean that the alternative is to let quacks dominate public discourse.

[AussieWog93]

>I can think of a Canadian professor

If we're thinking of the same professor/Kermit the Frog impersonator, he was definitely somewhat of a public figure before he got involved with the C-16 controversy.

If you look at his public appearances from before this viral clip (and even for a year or two after), most of it is fairly well grounded and uncontroversial (or at least, not controversial for controversy's sake).