Great Minds
Everyone’s an expert it seems, these days, as the ever-increasing number of people prepared to grapple in public with the big ideas which will shape the future of our nation, culturally, socially, politically and economically, suggests. Whose contribution is most useful? Don’t confuse the pundit with the public intellectual, the specialist with the spin doctor, says Antonia Hart.

There are the pundits, of course, whose calming drivetime voices lull you into thinking they’ve cleared up confusion over matters of public interest; the heavier-weights who get invitations to write op-ed pieces in the broadsheets during times of crisis; the specialists who publish books and papers on specific topics, the academics whose research paper or book might catch the public imagination.
Professsor Declan Kiberd, of the UCD School of English, Drama and Film, agrees with the George Bernard Shaw character who extols the gift of lucidity in being able to explain anything to anybody. “It’s not just about explaining to specialists, but to the lay intelligentsia, which has always been especially strong in Ireland, where a book of literary criticism can sit in the bestseller lists next to Jordan’s biography.”
We’re interested, then, as a nation, and capable, but the Irish public intellectual, he says, is caught between European and American models and is embodied in figures who combine critical oppositionalism with a sort of “beloved figure” status. “It’s a form of built-in ambivalence which is particular to Ireland, and there are plenty of examples, like Anthony Cronin, who managed to be advisor to Haughey, radical socialist commentator and originator of Aosdana; or Flann O’Brien, civil servant and writer of coruscating satirical columns – straight by day, swinger by night.

YOU CAN READ THE REST OF THIS STORY IN THE 2009/2010 ISSUE OF UCD Connections Magazine, OUT NOW
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