Scholars, awake!
READERS AMBLING to the newsstand in search of the latest issue of The American Scholar might be startled to find its cover emblazoned not with a title like ''The Joy of Sesquipedalians'' but with the newsy omnibus headline ''Understanding Iraq.'' Inside the latest issue of the respected 73-year-old quarterly, published in Washington by the Phi Beta Kappa Society, photo critic Andy Grunberg worries that the same ''uncontrolled flow of digital images'' that exposed Abu Ghraib abuses makes it tough to tell real from false, ex-presidential speechwriter Ted Widmer likens the typical inaugural speech to a kabuki-like assemblage of set pieces, and Maj. Gen. Josiah Bunting III issues a stirring call for the educated classes to reverse their abandonment of military service.
All of which may once have been expected from The American Scholar, which took its title from Emerson's 1837 address to the Cambridge chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, in which he urged young thinkers to make their knowledge count outside Harvard Yard. But it's a rather drastic change from the prize-winning redoubt of belletristic personal essays the journal became seven years ago under editor Anne Fadiman. Last year, however, Fadiman was ousted by the board over a budget-cut quarrel; the Winter 2005 issue is the first helmed by Robert S. Wilson, previously an editor at USA Today, Civilization, Preservation, and most recently the AARP Bulletin.
Wilson says the journal is making a necessary return to its roots. ''It's hard to think of a time when so much shameless public mendacity—not only from those in government but in the way that products are sold and companies portray themselves—has had so little public consequence,'' he said via email. Public intellectuals, he added, have ''allowed themselves to be pushed to the sidelines, or turned into cable-channel quipsters.'' How will the journal help remedy this situation? ''I don't think editorial excellence ought to be a goal in itself,'' Wilson said. ''It ought to be a means to accomplishing something else.''
