To claim that the American electorate has of late adopted an ethos of anti-intellectualism is to do little more than state the obvious, and I will not belabor this point with de rigeur references to Adlai Stevenson, Susan Jacoby or Joe the Plumber. For me, however, one recent event stands out as a subject of particular concern to those with an interest in intellectual discourse in the United States. The “accusation” that Barack Obama has associated with Rashid Khalidi, a scholar of the Middle East at Columbia University, suggests that an exchange with those whose opinions differ from one’s own Read more