By Oweyegha-Afunaduula
When I was an academic many years ago, I was torn between advocating for thought leaders and think tanks on the one hand, and public intellectuals on the other. The world was getting flooded by thought leaders and think tanks, which were greatly influenced by people strongly anchored mostly in the disciplinary fields of knowledge and practice and associated professions. Meanwhile both the intellectual and public intellectual were becoming endangered species and being squeezed out of the universities and from the public space in favour of thought leaders and think tanks. This freed politicians and/or policy makers from the need for critical thinking, critical analysis and alternative analyses as solutions to our complex problem (the so-called wicked problems). The solutions tended to be recycled from one place to another, and from one problem to another. There were frequent claims that those who sought the services of thought leaders and Think Tanks, or consultancies, also told them what kind of results or recommendations they expected. Therefore, the problems remained and became even more complex and intractable. Unfortunately, we continued to use the simple methods of the disciplines to address them.
In this article I argue that in this era of increasingly complex(wicked) problems, we need to de-emphasise reliance on thought leaders, consultancies and think tanks, all of which tend to have entrenched interests and to ally with power to maintain the status quo. I suggest that we need to resuscitate the intellectual in general and the public intellectual in particular, to keep decision-makers on their toes, and to continue articulating and clarifying issues for society. We need public intellectuals to be at the centre of political and social processes, let alone discourses of any kind, to make sense out of nonsense.
Let me start by discussing the key concepts in the article.
- Intellectuals
“A healthy culture accepts the affronts of its intellectuals, since it understands that evolving serious discriminations out of a nuanced description of a society demands attentiveness, passion, and lack of compromise”. – Barbara Mistzal, 2007.
_____________________________________________________________
Intellectuals are the lifeblood of society’s knowledge. They are the people who dedicate their lives to discovering big ideas, engaging in critical thinking, and making breakthroughs that push the boundaries of human intellect (Hassan, 2024). Intellectuals probe into the future and its unknowns, excavate the past and interrogate today’s big questions. However, there are two types of intellectuals: those working primarily within specialised academic or professional circles and public intellectuals striving to connect their findings with society (Hassan, 2024).
Pires (2009) referred to the various roles intellectuals have played in culture and society along the times and to the issue of the public intellectuals’ position in democratic societies in the twenty-first century and in the future. She enquired if they still have authority and prerogatives and, if so, which are the sources of their intellectual power. Related to this, and as another reflection connected to the previous points, we have the issue of the nowadays so often referred “decline and fall” of public intellectuals and the fact that they have even been considered as “an endangered species” (e.g., Lanham, 2006).. Citing Richard Posner, the author of Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline(2002), she submits that an intellectual “is a person who, drawing on his intellectual resources, addresses a broad public on issues with a political or ideological dimension”.
Desch (2016) defined public intellectuals broadly as ‘persons who exert a large influence in the contemporary society of their country through their thought, writing or speaking”
Chongyi Feng (2005) defined an intellectual as a specialist who creates and communicates symbolised knowledge as means of living, and hopefully intervenes in social and political affairs in the name of universal values, truth and justice.
Therefore, the intellectual is different from the politicians, the soldiers, the businessman and others who exercise political, financial, military and other forms of power other than intellectual power in their social function in a country or society (e.g, Chongyi Feng, 2005). When production and communication of knowledge are taken as the primary concern of an intellectual, “the death of concerned intellectual” becomes an unwarranted anxiety because there is no reason to believe that knowledge and truth will no longer be pursued and valued by humankind (Chongyi Feng, 2005). Chongyi Feng (2005) argued that marginalisation of “critical imagination”, where it is a reality, seems to be caused not so much by absence of power of intellectuals as by lack of solidarity among intellectuals to fight for a common cause. He further argued that the problem lies as much in the lack of enthusiasm among intellectuals to transcend the boundaries of their professional relevance and intervene in broader social and political issues. However, governments and institutions of higher learning have also been working to ensure that intellectuals deviate from their role of clarifying and articulating social and political issues to emphasising academic and career objectives so that politicians have a field day to do anything they want below the Sun without challenge.
Mintz (2022) argues that intellectual history matters because ideas matter. He takes the power of ideas and discourse seriously. What is worrying is that it is becoming more difficult to separate the good ideas from the bad. This is where public intellectuals are important, because they serve the function to analyse and critique influential and emerging ideas in the public forum (Oxbridge Applications, Undated; Hartle, 1988).
The death of the intellectual has left a void in the centre of public life. In place of thought, we have opinion; in place of argument, we have journalism; in place of polemic, we have personality profiles; in place of reputation, we have celebrity. In place of public forums for debate, we have nothing but academic conferences (Ignatieff, 1997). Zelinsky (2020) has called for a new sociology of intellectuals for the 20th and 21st Century. This is particularly important because the influence of digitally-oriented intellectuals and/or public intellectuals is rising supersonically.
- Public Intellectuals
Public intellectuals are experts who are versed and trained enough to be able to comment on a wide range of public policy issues. The public intellectual serves a vital purpose in democratic discourse: exposing shibboleths masquerading as accepted wisdom. Public intellectuals are critics, and critiquing those who hawk bad policy wares is a necessary function in a democracy (Drezner, 2017) and in democracy building.Conversely, they are those academics, thinkers and writers who know a little bit about a great many things. They are willing to share their opinions on many aspects of our politics and our culture.
At worst, a public intellectual is a “second hand dealer in ideas” (Hayek, 1949), and at best a challenger of the conventional wisdom (Kim, 2017). Smith (2014) explored Hayek’s views on intellectuals, whom he called second-hand dealers in ideas. In Hayek’s context, the term “second-hand” does not disparage the intelligence, knowledge or importance of intellectuals. Intellectuals may be intelligent or stupid, wise or foolish, knowledgeable or ignorant, quick-witted or dull, original or hackneyed. By “second-hand” Hayek means second in the order of the transmission of knowledge. Hayek’s intellectual is defined in terms of his social role in the dissemination of specialised knowledge to a wider audience; he is an “intermediary in the spreading of ideas.” (Smith, 2014).To put it another way, intellectuals, according to Hayek, are not the scholars or experts in a field but, instead, are the middlemen of ideas. Inhabiting diverse fields from journalism to medicine, they are familiar with a wide range of topics and have mastered the art of communicating them to the public. They write columns in newspapers and discuss current events on the radio and in town halls, salons, and businesses. They are respected in their own fields and are listened to when they discuss broad social issues. By virtue of their role as the middlemen of ideas, intellectuals determine which ideas reach, and are likely to be accepted by, the general public. (Hayek, 1949 cited by Stefanie Haeffele and Molly Harnish, 2019). Peters (2019) characterised Hayek as a classical liberal public intellectual.
An honest public intellectual will have lots to say about the future of higher education, but rather than offering a single definitive description of the postsecondary world of 2030, they may put forth a number of scenarios (Kim, 2017).
One thing is true and will remain true. Public intellectuals as they have traditionally been perceived, as individual scholars speaking truth to power, are a declining feature of public life globally. Costa and Murphy (2020) have submitted that the future of Public Intellectuals lies in reforming the digital public sphere. They have argued that academia needs to further value and prioritise engagement with the digital public sphere and that beyond simply taking its forms and standards as a given, the future of public intellectualism rests on constructively improving this discourse for the benefit of the public as a whole. Besides, they argue thatthe question of the future of public intellectualism, is not just a question of repositioning the public intellectual, but also how we consider scholarship and the university itself.
In another article (Murphy and Costa, 2019), they argued that the concept of public intellectual needed reframing in the context of recasting academic scholarship in the era of digitality. They added that the digital public sphere a well-evidenced set of interventions from the academy. Noting that the ideals of digital scholarship are tampered with the realities and politics of academia, they suggest that public pedagogy needs to be directly aligned to the digital sphere as a space of intellectual engagement. They conclude that rise of the digitised public intellectual will march on, regardless of what the university does or does not do (Lange, 2015 cited by Murphy and Costa, 2019). It is also the case that the university itself as an institutional force is currently undergoing considerable change and is being reimagined in various ways (Barnett, 2013 cited by Murphy and Costa, 2019); Barnett, 2016 cited by Murphy and Costa, 2019) and Robertson, 2017) cited by Murphy and Costa, 2019). Nevertheless, existing in tandem with these developments is a still strong desire on the part of both publics and the academy to engage with ideas in the public (Murphy and Costa, 2019).
Mauro Basaure, Alfredo Joignant and Rachel Théodore (2022) recognise the global digital public intellectual, the global digital stage and the role of both in shaping a new public intellectual. Korom (2014) stresses how spaces of opinion shaping the new public intellectual. In 2023 the Daily express recognised me as the second most influencial opinion writer in Uganda and, in the same year, Tell Media of Kenya recognised me as the most influential multigenre writer in East Africa. Both Daily Express and Tell Media are digital public media. Writers are public intellectuals (e.g., Hawes, 2016; Heynders, 2016) just like philosophers are (Baert, 2016; Halwani, 2016; Weinberg, 2016)influencing minds.
The demand and desire for new forms of public intellectualism goes much further than calls for evidence-based policy and increased critical literacy. Instead, the responsibility is now on academia to re-imagine one of its core remits: connecting theory and practice. Strengthening and deepening this connection would go some way to helping ideas flourish and disseminate in the digital public sphere (Costa and Murphy (2020). This shift in focus and alignment would assist the university in its desire to encourage public engagement, an activity that this reconstituted public intellectualism is perfectly designed for (Costa and Murphy, 2020).
Currently, there are those, such as Alex Fergnani (2023) who thinkthat our public intellectuals are not responsibly informing the public about the future(s). Alex Fergnani (2023) says that public intellectuals should impartially discuss multiple images of the future to teach the public that the future is not predetermined. They should also meticulously examine the visions of the future they present, taking into account the emotional load they carry, in order to steer clear of fearmongering or excessive idealisation. Additionally, it is crucial for them to ensure that these visions are not influenced by fleeting trends and immediate events (Alex Fergnani, 2023).
We need public intellectuals now more than ever. While the importance of both intellectuals and public intellectuals cannot be either/or, as each plays a unique and necessary role, the public intellectuals in today’s world make a more visible impact on society (e.g., Hassan, 2024). However, Cummings (2016) and Lanham (2006have looked at the idea of the public intellectual, considering whether such thinkers are becoming an endangered species.
- Thought Leaders
A thought leader is an individual or organization recognized as an expert and authority in a specific field, whose ideas and opinions influence others. They are often sought out for guidance and insights within their area of expertise, and they play a role in shaping discussions and trends. They can wield a lot of power on thought processes in various sectors of the economy. Thought leaders know one big thing and believe that their important idea will change the world (Drezner, 2017). They tend to be specialised, sometimes overspecialised. only becomes known for something when one can successfully and confidently share one’s unique point of view and communicate clarity in one’s purpose. One’s audience, and success, will follow (Biderman-Gross, 2023)
Biderman-Gross (2023) has defined a Thought Leader asa person who is specialized in a given area and whom others in that industry turn to for guidance. As the term implies, a thought leader leads others in the thinking around a given topic(Biderman-Gross, 2023).A Thought Leader typically stands out among competitors (Biderman-Gross, 2023). However, being a thought leader is about more than profits or even industry status. It’s about being authentic and empowering. It’s about influence – getting other people to think differently about something specific. It’s much more than just generating content and commenting on world events and trends. Thought leaders bring alternate views and insightful points to the table (Biderman-Gross, 2023).
According to Biderman-Gross (2023)anyone who aspires to become a thought leader in their industry should consider: Are you firm in your purpose and beliefs? Are you staying true to yourself? Are you willing to shout about and defend your purpose?
Being a thought leader means having a unique point of view and consistently living it. You must demonstrate strength and discipline in all your actions. You must have clarity about your purpose. That’s how you become known for something, productize it and even monetize it (Biderman-Gross, 2023). However, Aarts (2025) notes that Thought leaders have not always been called thought leaders. Today everyone is a thought leader because everyone has a platform. Says Daniel Monehin cited by Aarts (2025)’ “A few decades ago, if you were given a platform to share your thoughts or point of view, you were part of an elite group. Today, everyone has a platform”.
Credit Internet, a whole new ecosystem has emerged for business and professional content -one in which almost anyone can be an expert (Aarts, 2025). If you have a good idea or a smart observation, there is now very little stopping you from sharing it with, quite literally, the entire working world (Daniel Monehin cited by Aarts, 2025). This digital democratization makes it much easier to hang out your shingle as a thought leader. The pool of people that can participate—and who can, therefore, share useful information with others—has grown exponentially.” If you have a good idea or a smart observation, there is now very little stopping you from sharing it with, quite literally, the entire working world (Daniel Monehin cited by Aarts, 2025). Gatekeeper are now gone (Aarts, 2025).
Winick (2025) has recently explained the difference between a Thought Leaders and Philosophers. Philosophers think deep thoughts about ideas. Thought leaders lead in converting an idea into reality. The ability to take your ideas, create content, and shape products that help others solve their toughest problems is at the heart of thought leadership – and so is market viability (Winick, 2025).
- Think Tanks
The word ‘think tank’ stems from the RAND Corporation, which operated as a closed and secure environment for US strategic thinking after World War II. The term entered popular usage in the 1960s to describe a group of specialists who undertake intensive study of important policy issues (Stone, 2005).
UNDP (2003) cited by Stone (2005) defines think tanks as follows: … organizations engaged on a regular basis in research and advocacy on any matter related to public policy. They are the bridge between knowledge and power in modern democracies” (UNDP, 2003: 6). They practice what Diane Stone (2013) called Think Tank Thinking.
Think tanks are proliferating. Although they are outside of government, many of these policy research institutes are perceived to influence political thinking and public policy (Stone, 1997). As think tank numbers explode, they have become an integral part of political life. Political leaders, corporations and non-governmental organisations draw upon their expert advice to advance their causes in the battle of ideas (Stone and Denham,2004).
Think tanks go by many names: think tank, research centre, public policy research institute, idea factory, investigation centre, laboratory of ideas, policy research institute, and more. In other languages, the list is even longer: centro de pensamiento, groupe de réflexion, Denkfabrik, serbatoi di pensiero to name but a few (IFRI).
IFRI observes that Think Tanks find themselves at the crossroads of four spheres: political (including diplomatic and military dimensions), economic (corresponding to the action of companies with an international dimension and that of business circles), media (organizing around the flow of information and contributing to shaping opinions, mentalities and representations) and academic (the origin of the production of knowledge and partly structuring the dissemination of knowledge).
On a global scale, think tanks form a small industry, which is a sector of activity on its own. They are open organizations, built around a permanent base of researchers or experts, whose mission, on the one hand, is to develop analyses, summaries and ideas on an objective basis with a view to inform the conduct of private or public strategies in the general interest; on the other hand, to actively debate issues within their field of competence (IFRI).
According to the 2019 Think Tank State of the Sector (TTSS), which analyses think tanks around the world, the majority of think tanks for which there is data available are non-profit organisations (67%), followed by university institutes or centres (16%), government organisations (10%), for-profit organisations (5%) and a small group of other (2%). This also varies by region. For instance, in China the percentage of government think tanks is 74% while in the US and Canada 97% are non-profit.
According to Stone’s (2005) classification of Think Tanks, which relates to the think tank’s origin, and cited by Build a Think Tank (https://buildathinktank.org/think-tanks/) the following are the types of Think Tanks:
- Independent civil society think tanks established as non-profit organisations.
- Policy research institutes located in, or affiliated with, a university.
- Governmentally created or state-sponsored think tanks.
- Corporate-created or business-affiliated think tanks.
- Political party (or candidate) think tanks.
These, however, are just examples of Think Tanks. There can be variations within each category. Within independent civil society organisations, for example, some behave like research consultancies, undertaking research on demand and even bidding on calls for proposals.
While academics often pride themselves on their detachment from immediate policy problems . . . think tanks pursue a strategy of semi-detachment: maintaining a certain distance from day-to-day policy-making, but keeping close enough to attract the attention of policy-makers to their longer-term perspectives and alternative analyses (Wallace, p. 282, cited by John Fenwick, 2006).
In their Stone, Diane and Maxwell, Simon. Eds. (2005) “Global Knowledge Networks and International Development: Bridges Across Boundaries” published Routledge highlighted the value building bridges across boundaries. Indeed, if we embrace the new and different systems or cultures of knowledge production of crossdisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and extradisciplinarity, we shall not only broaden the mindsets of thought leaders but also the collective mindsets of Think Tanks by bridging the boundaries between the fields of knowledge and practice.
Think Tanks, like Thought Leaders, have squeezed Public Intellectuals from the public space, thereby reducing the value of critical thinking, Critical anlysis and critical alternative analysis which critical public intellectuals bring in the public space.
Market Place of Ideas
The marketplace of ideas theory is a concept suggesting that the best ideas will emerge and gain acceptance when there is open and free competition of thought and expression in a public forum. It’s based on the analogy of a free market in economics, where competition leads to the best products being selected. This theory is often applied to discussions about freedom of speech and the press, particularly in the context of democratic societies.
The expression “marketplace of ideas” is used in reference to John Stuart Mill’s political theory in “On Liberty”. The metaphor describes a situation in which people speak and exchange ideas freely. It reflects something of Mill’s liberalism – his desire to minimise governments’ and society’s interference in the life of the individual (Gordon, 1997). It also reflects ideological beliefs that market behaviour represents paradigmatically the kind of freedom to which we aspire, so speech and action must befree (Gordon, 1997). However, the metaphor does not come from Mill’s own text On Liberty. Quite to the contrary, it does not reflect accurately Mill’s free speech expressed in On Liberty (Gordon, 1997).
Blocher (2008) recorded that academic and popular understandings embraced the notion that free speech, like the free market, creates a competitive environment in which the best ideas ultimately prevail. However, as with the free market for goods and services, there are discontents who point to the market failures that make the marketplace metaphor aspirational at best, and inequitable at worst. The marketplace of ideas model remains faithfully wedded to a neoclassical view that depends on a perfectly costless and efficient exchange of ideas, but also remains vulnerable. Blocher (2008), by addressing the “economic” objections to the marketplace metaphor, attempted to better describe, explain, and rehabilitate the marketplace of ideas.
Lombardi (2018) observed that the traditional model of a “marketplace of ideas” was intended to justify freedom of speech in terms of its optimal outcome in the production of truth. But today our behavior on the internet, the main locus of the “marketplace of ideas,” is continuously monitored and processed through the analysis of big data. He thought the Marketplace of ideas is an illusion. Nunziato (2019) surveys the severe problems in today’s online marketplace of ideas and the efforts that regulators – and the online platforms themselves- have recently adopted in an attempt to address such problems. While the change in the marketplace of ideas has increased diversity in creative thinking, it tends to build obstacles for the public intellectuals trying to filter out the bad from the good in the market place of ideas (Drezner, 2017).Morgan Weiland (2022) was convinced the marketplace of ideas wa dead and that there was instead a rise of a post-truth free-flow of information.
Ideas Industry
Drezner’s (2017)“The Ideas Industry”is a must-read book for anyone even remotely interested in influencing where higher education will go in the next few decades. If you are interested in ideas and the spread of ideas, then you will love this book. If you are a merchant of ideas, then read The Ideas Industry as both a critique of your world and as a roadmap (Kim, 2017).
The central thesis of “The Ideas Industry”is that the modern marketplace of ideas is tilted heavily in favour of thought leaders over public intellectuals. Thought leaders know a few things, and they waste no opportunities to proclaim these beliefs (Kim, 2017). In fact, Drezner (2017) puts forth the argument that the traditional public intellectual has been supplanted by a new model: the “thought leader”. What is happening, according to Drezner, is that the marketplace of ideas has turned into the Ideas Industry. The twenty-first century public sphere is bigger, louder and more lucrative than ever before. A surge of high-level panels, conference circuits, and speaker confabs allows intellectuals to mix with other members of the political, economic and cultural elite in a way that would have been inconceivable a half century ago (Drezner, 2017).
There is a great deal of good that can come from the twenty-first-century Ideas Industry. It is surely noteworthy that a strong demand has emerged for new ideas and vibrant ways of thinking about the world. But like any revolution, there are winners and there are losers. These trends also handicap more traditional purveyors of ideas housed in universities or think tanks. Some, if not most, of these institutions have not adapted as quickly to the new ecosystem of ideas, even though some individuals housed within these institutions have (e.g., Drezner, 2017).
Although their roles are similar, thought leaders and public intellectuals remain two distinct entities. Public intellectuals’ training gives them the authority to discuss a wide range of issues; thought leaders’ enthusiasm gives them an audience who will listen to their ideas. Public distrust in authority figures has led to a significant rise in “thought leaders”. Kim (2017 believes that higher education needs more public intellectuals (particularly those coming out of the technology and learning community), but that those of us within that world would be better off shooting for thought leader status.
Drezner (2017) demonstrates that today’s most prominent thought leaders are often advancing the agendas of the already fortunate. The ability to translate scholarship into policy is largely dependent on access to capital. The ideas of think tanks and consultancies with the deepest pockets are likely to gather the most attention (Kim, 2017) indecision-making circles, thereby making the contribution of higher education to meaningful and effective change towards freedom, justice and democracy minimal or a letdown.
The Ideas Industry: How Pessimists, Partisans, and Plutocrats are Transforming the Marketplace of Ideas (Drezner, 2017) argued that three trends were transforming the public sphere: the erosion of trust in authority and expertise, the rise in political polarization and the emergence of plutocrats with a vested interest in funding certain ideas. This led to a marketplace of ideas in which the barriers to entry were much lower but the barriers to exit were much higher. In short: it has become easier to introduce new ideas into the public sphere, but bad ideas just don’t die (Drezner, 2024 citing Drezner 2017).
The Fate and Future of Public Intellectuals in Uganda
Public intellectuals in Uganda are individuals who engage in public discourse and contribute to societal conversations, often alongside their academic or professional careers. These individuals leverage their knowledge and expertise to address issues relevant to Uganda’s social, political, and cultural landscape. However, they are an endangered species.
Sserunjogi Charles Dickens (2023) examined of the historical role of scholars and public intellectuals in Uganda’s post-independence politics: and given a critical study of the gang of four that mushroomed during the reign of the Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF) at the end of the 1970s. The Gang of Four were Edward Bitanywaine Rugumayo, Dani Wadada Nabudere, Omwony Ojok and Yashpal Tandon.
Earlier, Daily Monitor (2018) wondered where Uganda’s public intellectuals and, hence, public intellectualism had disappeared to. The Independent newspaper noted that between 1960 and 1990 intellectuals exerted great influence on public policy discourse and their views were of great significance to the nation. The academics would go beyond the confines of the narrow specialisations participate in national debates on issues of national import and come face to face with leaders.
Apparently, this was still the case when I joined the academic staff of Makerere University at the beginning of the 1990s and it continued well into the new millennium. I was one of the key participants in those debates. Uganda became a glaring example of a country which experienced intellectual death and the death of the public intellectual (Kato, 2023; Oweyegha-Afunaduula, 2025). By the time I retired from academic life in 2009, public intellectualism in Uganda was almost dead (Oweyegha-Afunaduula, cited by Kato, 2023).
Whatever the debate concerning intellectuals, thought leaders, think tank thinkers, and public intellectuals globally, public intellectuals are now needed more than ever, particularly in Uganda where ignoramuses, charlatans and fake thinkers now predominate in every sphere of human life and endeavour, and the politicians and their sycophants have consumated the traditional intellectual and public intellectual spaces. They serve a new and vital purpose. They need to analyse and criticise popular thought leaders.
Public intellectuals are necessary to filter the quality thinkers from the charlatans. Besides, we need public intellectuals capable of engaging in critical thinking, critical analysis and generation of alternative analyses and ideas, and debating without fear or favour.Public intellectuals know enough about many things to be able to point out intellectual charlatans (e.g., Drezner, 2017).
If politics is to deliver in terms of quality development, quality transformation and quality progress in all spheres of human endeavour, the unity of politics and public intellectualism must be pursued and enhanced.Public intellectuals must be allowed to manifest intellectually in the public space. Otherwise, the public space becomes a theatre for political and economic manipulation to the detriment of our current and future generations of Ugandans. Already development, transformation and progress of Uganda and Ugandans seem to be things of the past. Politicians and their backers have reduced everything to money. Thinkers are despised and crooks are glorified.
Unfortunately, institutional powerhas now combined with political power to squeeze intellectual power out of the institutions of higher learning in favour of academic power. Institutional power refers to the influence and control that established organizations, such as governments, universities, corporations, or religious institutions, have over individuals and society. It stems from the formal and informal structures, resources, and authority these institutions wield, enabling them to shape rules, norms, and behaviors.
This power can manifest in various ways, including setting policies, allocating resources, and influencing public opinion. Political power refers to the ability of individuals, groups, or institutions to influence or control the behavior of others within a political context. It encompasses the capacity to make decisions, set agendas, and shape public policy. This influence can be exerted through various means, including coercion, persuasion, and the manipulation of social structures and institutions. “Academic power” can refer to several related concepts: the influence and authority within academic institutions, the power structures that govern them, or the capacity to influence knowledge and discourse. It can also refer to the individual ability to succeed academically. Academic power today prefer reversal to scholasticism and academicism at the expense of intellectualism.
Together institutional power, political power and academic power have coalesced their influences to almost completely kill intellectualism in the universities and public intellectualism in the public spaces in Uganda. Many fake ideas of the politicians and institutional intellectuals deliberately escape the scrutiny of the public intellectuals.
Those public intellectuals can only engage in critical thought on the fake ideas and offer alternative analyses in print media, social media, electronic media or end up just writing articles for publication in print and digital media. This status quo has helped presidentialism to grow and mushroom, and for the President to become the main source of ideas, as academics concentrate on academic production and building their careerism.
If there was a period of post-intellectualism in the 20th Century characterised by decline in democracy, reason and responsibility (Wood, 1996), what was a twentieth century phenomenon spilt over into the 21st Century and is exemplified by Uganda. Here intellectuals are despised and almost squeezed out of the universities. More seriously, public intellectuals are so threatened that their space is now occupied by charlatans whose reasoning serves the status quo and their ideas go untested in the marketplace of ideas. In the universities it is the thought leaders that predominate in the disciplines, where multidisciplinarity is tolerated but the new and different knowledge production cultures or systems of crossdisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and extradisciplinarity are hotly resisted. Yet these knowledge cultures or systems, expand the visions of thinkers and enable them to think critically and reason better, and accept responsibility for their failures more readily.
There is a suggestion that our universities should take the field of study called Futures Studies seriously and begin to develop toolsin academia necessary to prepare public intellectuals adequately so their projections, visions, and insights about the future are not overly singular, simplistic, and emotionally loaded (Fergnani, 2023). This, however, requires the universities to open up to the new and different cultures or systems of knowledge production – crossdisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and extradisciplinarity. In most, if not all universities in Uganda in particular and Africa in general not is the field of Futures Studies absent, but the new systems of knowledge production are decades away to be accepted on the campuses.
Revival of the public intellectual in Uganda should be a must. However, it is necessary that power does not emphasise fear as a tool of governance as this will deter people from entering the public space to articulate and clarify issues for society. If the public intellectuals re-emerge in Uganda the public should demand more of our public intellectuals when they discuss the future. We have the right and responsibility to both forgive them and demand more from them. Our future(s) is at stake (e.g, Alex Fergnani, 2023). However, genuine public intellectuals should talk about our past, present and future responsibly and do not just toe the line of thinking desired by power. If they do, they will fail our society, which has already been failed by the political leadership, which has chosen to be selfish, ethnicitists and overly consumptive.
in this era of increasingly complex (wicked) problems, we need to de-emphasise reliance on thought leaders, consultancies and think tanks, all of which tend to have entrenched interests and to ally with power to maintain the status quo. I suggest that we need to resuscitate the intellectual in general and the public intellectual in particular, to keep decision-makers on their toes, and to continue articulating and clarifying issues for society. We need public intellectuals to be at the centre of political, social processes and environmental processes, let alone discourses of any kind, to make sense out of nonsense.
For God and My Country.
Prof. Oweyegha-Afunaduula is a Conservation Biologis and a member of Center for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis
