Folks, an absolutely brilliant essay on the real failing of academics. The part about multilingualism is the best:
We should be beautifully multilingual in a range of nested, situated ways of talking and being–a good humanist should be able to walk into a room of advertisers, a room of Hell’s Angels, a room of soldiers, a room of drag performers, a room of hiphop artists, a room of soybean farmers, a room of car salesmen, and adapt to the conversation given time and opportunity. Not master it, not own it, not remake it as a knowledge product–but to understand what flies and what doesn’t, what’s being said and unsaid, what’s sayable and unsayable. We’re plainly not able. Perhaps less able than an advertiser, a Hell’s Angel, a soldier, a hiphop artist.
Sorry for a long quote but I want to save it here for myself. The author is so right when he says that we often forget to wonder how we sound to anybody outside the bubble and that leads to tragic consequences.
We get together and recite a litany of talking points we all know by heart at each other. And then we call it intellectual conversation.
Clarissa's Blog 
What if we substitute “academics” with “Democrat leadership”? I guess we will get a more realistic explanation for Trump’s success than “voters being bored”, “(stupid) voters needing a clown” or almighty Putin… All of the above are legitimate partial reasons too, but they have an unfortunate common denominator – they displace the responsibility to things outside Democrats’ control and this displacement prevents healthy reflection.
LikeLike
Yes, absolutely. The Dem leadership should retire en masse. They have embarrassed themselves and shown to be completely inept.
LikeLike
Yes they have, but not because they did not promote a clown instead of Hillary, or did not “entertain” voters better.
LikeLike
Hey, when that Attorney General started vociferating like a total banshee that toilets “are just like segregayayayaytion”, I realized how ridiculous we were making ourselves look to everybody outside the bubble. It was intense vicarious shame.
LikeLike
Why this introspection after ther election? Did none of you realize how ridiculous you looked before the election?
LikeLike
My blog was founded in 2009. This was before several elections. Which one exactly do you mean?
LikeLike
It is only a baby blog (seven years old) then. My blog was founded in 2004. Although yours gets a lot more readers and comments in any single day than mine does in a decade. 😉
LikeLike
Great photo on your blog, by the way.
LikeLike
I’ve tried to do this, but as a result, other academics rejected me.
LikeLike
When I read that essay, my thought was (quoting Tonto to the Lone Ranger), “Who’s ‘we’, white man?” I’ve talked to most of those people just fine. Maybe the problem is that I don’t do it often enough. That writer sounded like academics are found under cabbage leaves or come from some inbred community of intellectuals. News flash: many of us are related to some or all of the people he lists, and we talk to them regularly, at least at weddings, funerals, and holiday gatherings.
LikeLike
He means talking about politics, about such issues as Trump, and not the kind of conversation one has at a wedding. Listening to people who vote for Trump and having a dialogue with them.
LikeLike
Do you think people don’t talk about politics at weddings and on holidays?
LikeLike
American people??? No, I can’t imagine an American starting a political debate at a wedding. Unless it’s a Ukrainian American. 😆
LikeLike
A key to this is actually listening to what other people are saying. Some academics I know can do this and others cannot at all. ANOTHER issue (and I have no answer for what to do about this) is how thinking in a critical way about culture/society/norms (especially historical) is beyond many members of the public. They may want to know and may be keen but they cannot actually move beyond seeing the most obvious analogues in the past and this leads to crude anachronisms at every turn. I don’t know what to do about this. I struggle to address the public in my writings with this in mind. I don’t think I am very successful. I will continue to try, but, yeah.
LikeLike