Marginality and the Academic.

The article concentrates on the question of social and psychological separation of the academic and intellectual in American society. First, it is apparent that the findings lend support to the view that academics function marginally to the main social structural framework of society, especially self-defined intellectuals. Protestant self-defined intellectuals were equally as marginal as Jews, though more of the latter identified themselves as intellectuals. Respondents were not part and parcel of their community's group life, informal or formal. They by passed the cliques, clubs, and organizations of the core society. Secondly, the academic seems to be separated in an attitudinal sense: a majority of respondents indicated perceiving a serious amount of anti-intellectualism and felt that they held minority views on salient issues. Yet, the academics did not appear to experience status and power deprivations, which one might expect as a corollary of social and psychological marginality. In sum, on certain dimensions the social structural of most of these academics seems to be one of separation: namely, the social structural and attitudinal, or social psychological. The empirical literature, although in short supply, suggests that the academic is socially isolated from the larger society and experiences attitudinal alienation. Interviews with sixty-one college and university professors tended to confirm the said view, but particularly so among those respondents who identified themselves as intellectuals.