Public Intellectuals for Hire

Corporations have long used intellectuals to help improve their technology, learn the psychology of consumers and consumption, improve their advertising and marketing techniques and, essentially, increase productivity and profits. A more recent trend has been the use of intellectuals in the public arena to legitimate their practices or challenge scientific and ethical claims that can undermine their bottom line. Exxon Mobile funds anti-global-warming research, the tobacco companies once set up an entire institute to tell the public what they knew wasn't true, chemical companies engaged in similar practices and the auto industry attempted to fight Ralph Nader's successful push for increased car safety. More recently, corporations have teamed up with media and publishers to sell the public seemingly "common sense" arguments that support their interests and alter the public debate.

Among the most prominent are Malcolm Gladwell, who uses pseudo-science to celebrate the achievements of corporations and their marketing successes, Thomas Friedman who makes millions providing a one-sided perspective on globalization that elides all the losers and the entire Fox News team, who provide a perspective that is decidedly pro-business and pro-capitalism. Universities have also long fallen prey to the allure of corporate money in their research. the latest example of this trend may be a book from two years ago that is still garnering considerable consternation among those critiquing the food and farming industries, Food Politics: What Everybody Needs to Know by Robert Paarlberg. The book is described by one critic thusly, ""The author is an academic, not a journalist, and his efforts to get the food facts right ring through every page. Paarlberg challenges many of the ideas that are frequently voiced - but rarely questioned - in popular food discourse...Although many of his claims call into question sacrosanct principles in activist and academic circles, there are good reasons to hear Paarlberg out; he backs up his arguments with data, and writes based on decades of experience as a political scientist and policy analyst working in the field." (Amazon).

So what's the problem? Aren't polemics an important part of the public sphere? Certainly. But there are two very valid critiques of the book. First, he has no citations, so you can't actually check his data or facts. This is a serious shortfall and one wonders why a respected academic would suddenly turn away from noting his references and source (de rigeur in academia). The second problem, and what people really "need to know," is that he is a paid consultant for Monsanto, the agricultural giant that will benefit greatly from those who are swayed by the book's central point. This is where the line between corporate interest and individual scholarship becomes most troubling. Again, one can write a book making an argument from one perspective without necessarily doing extensive research. People do it all the time. But when a respected academic writes a book that includes "facts" and "common sense" arguments he is bringing the imprimatur of his experience, the publisher (Oxford Press) and his university to bear. So arguments that in fact support the continuation of the status quo sound like objective critiques of extant research on the topic. 

Thus the public is bamboozled and the critiques of the food industry (who include all the people starving in the third world because of food subsidies in the U.S. and Europe) are left out in the cold. This practice has existed as long as corporations have been around (that is a big part of the job public relations does), but it is troubling to think top academics are essentially on the take, available to offer their respected opinions to the highest bidder. It's like a collective of less charismatic Larry "Lonesome" Rhoads, shucking the public for fun and profits, though with no camera to catch them in the act.