Having
my work archived along with Russell’s was particularly
moving since he was a model for me as a public intellectual
as I began teaching and writing in the 1960s. I came of age
when intellectual, political, and cultural paradigms were shifting.
Protests were advancing on university campuses and in the streets
against the Vietnam War, systemic racism, the military-industrial
complex, the corporatization of the university, and the ongoing
assaults waged on women, the poor and the vulnerable. Intellectuals
and artists such as Jean Paul Sartre, Allen Ginsberg, Norman
Mailer, Ellen Willis, Susan Sontag, Paul Goodman, James Baldwin,
Angela Davis and Martin Luther King, Jr. were translating their
ideas into actions and exhibiting a moral courage that both
held power accountable and refused to be seduced by it. This
was an age of visionary change, civic courage, and democratic
inclusiveness; it was a time in which language translated into
actions that enabled people to understand how power operated
on their daily lives and how their daily existences and relationships
to the world could be more engaging in critical and radically
imaginative ways.
For
me, Bertrand Russell stood out among these intellectuals in
a way that was both iconic and personal. Russell was not only
a rigorous scholar but also a public intellectual who moved
with astonishing ease through a range of disciplines, ideas,
and social problems. He embodied a new kind of public intellectual,
one who functioned as a border crosser and traveler who like
another great public intellectual, Edward Said, refused to hold
on to scholarly territory or a disciplinary realm in order to
protect or bolster his fame or ego. Careerism was anathema to
Russell and it was obvious in his willingness to push against
conceits and transgressions of power whether it was contesting
World War 1 as a conscientious objector, dissenting against
the authoritarian populism consuming much of Europe in the 1930s,
protesting against the threat of nuclear weapons, or criticizing
the horrors and political depravity that marked the United States’
war against the Vietnamese people.
In
pushing the boundaries of civic courage and the moral imagination,
Russell took risks, put his body on the line, and made visible
the crimes of his time, even if it meant going to jail, which
he did as late in his life as the age of 89 after protesting
against nuclear weapons. Russell lived in what can be called
dangerous times and he responded by placing morality, critical
analysis, collective struggle, and a profound belief in democratic
socialism at the center of his politics.
I
was always moved by his courage, and his belief in the political
capacities of everyday people and the notion that education
was central to politics itself. Russell believed that people
had to be informed in order to act in the name of justice. He
believed that politics could be measured by how much it improved
people’s lives, gave them a sense of hope, and pointed
to a future that was decidedly better than the present. Russell,
like Vaclav Havel, another towering public intellectual, believed
that politics followed culture and that there was no possibility
of social change unless there was a change in peoples’
attitudes, consciousness, and how they live their lives. Russell
believed that a critical education could teach young people
not to look away and to take risks in the name of a future of
hope and possibility. Russell’s radical investment in
the power of education was more than simply a strong conviction.
Not only did he start his own progressive school in the 1920s,
but he believed that one demand of the public intellectual was
to be rigorous and accessible and to make one’s work meaningful
in order for it to be critical and transformative. Russell connected
education to social change and believed that matters of identity,
desire, power, and values were never removed from political
struggles.
Not
only did he write incessantly as a public intellectual, but
he was always willing to throw his body and mind into the thick
and fray of the social problems he addressed. As a writer and
political activist, he was overtly derided, and even condemned
by other intellectuals. One episode that moved me immensely
when I learned of it was that he was denied a position at the
College of the City of New York. At the time, powerful conservatives
both in and out of the Catholic Church saw his ideas as dangerous,
going so far as to claim if he took up the job at CCNY he would
be occupying a “Chair of Indecency.” I read about
this period in Russell’s life soon after I was denied
tenure for political reasons at Boston University by the notorious
right wing president, John Silber.
He
made clear that there had to be a crucial element of love and
solidarity in the ability to feel passionate about freedom and
justice. Erich Fromm, one of the great Frankfurt School theorists,
called Russell a prophet because his “capacity to disobey
is rooted, not in some abstract principle, but in the most real
experience there is—in the love of life.” In an
age of “fake news,” Russell is an extraordinary
and insightful reminder in the power of informed rationality,
science, and evidence. At a time when the threat of a nuclear
disaster looms larger than ever, Russell offers both in words
and deeds the recognition that security cannot be gained through
a culture of fear, fraud, armaments, and armed struggle.
At
a time when democracy is under siege, authoritarian populism
is on the rise, public values are under assault, and people
are losing faith in democratic institutions, Russell’s
writings, actions, and struggles offer a potent reminder of
the need for civic courage, moral outrage, critical thinking,
and the necessity of a politics that can do the work of translating
private troubles into broader social issues. Russell reminds
us of the value of not only being a public intellectual, but
of the power of ideas and the necessity of education as the
precondition for never allowing justice to grow dead in us while
remembering that no society is ever just enough.
For
Russell, politics was not just about changing the economic structures
of domination, it was also about a struggle over agency, identity,
values, and modes of identification. The latter seems particularly
important at a time when unbridled individualism, unchecked
belief in privatization, and a reductive investment in self-interest
have been elevated to the highest ideals of many Western societies,
contributing to an age in which dangerous forms of authoritarianism
are once again emerging in many countries. Against this collapse
into nihilism and the abyss of authoritarianism, Russell provides
a vision that is expansive and life-giving. His work and life
offer a model of hope tempered with courage, and his actions
speak strongly to the importance of collective struggles and
the need for broad-based social movements. Remembering Russell
is to reclaim a vision in an age that seems to lack one, and
in doing so to develop a sense of responsibility in the face
of the unspeakable, and to do so with dignity, self-reflection,
and the courage to act in the face of injustice. Sharing a space
with Russell’s archives for me is a great honour, because
it is a constant reminder of not only how to learn from the
past, but what it means to work in the shadow of a life committed
to justice, equity, joy, and civic courage.
