ABSTRACT
In the eighteenth century, public intellectuals could find their credibility in an emerging print media and the discursive communities available in coffeehouse, salon, or table-talk environments. Indeed, it is a testament to the power of public knowledge that so much of the struggle for democracy has taken place within the university. The conservative educational agenda serves as a thinly veiled apology for a highly dogmatic, elitist, and reactionary politics that is antithetical to democracy and unabashedly premised on privileged forms of public knowledge. If public knowledge is a right available to all citizens rather than a privilege, and if the university is a place where such knowledge is produced and promulgated, then the struggle over the curriculum truly becomes a battle for democracy. Intellectuals committed to reclaiming the public sphere for progressive ends cannot afford to promulgate or participate in distortions of the truth.
