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I have observed that those academics who are intellectuals who engage the public are discouraged to do so, by timid or, more, bigoted administrators who are anti-intellectuals.  The faculty who do engage the public that these administrators wish to praise and reward are hardly intellectual, and so are dismissed by faculty at large.

That academics are marginalized to any degree merely for engaging with non-academics in the public sphere is certainly damning, and a worthwhile confession. Some anti-intellectualism comes from a mistrust of a small cohort of highly credentialed lunatics, naturally, but I think what many call anti-intellectualism is not really anti-intellectualism. Most of the time, the anti-intellectualism charge is directed at those who dismiss “credentialed individuals,” not because they have a Ph.D., but because they (a minority) presume wisdom, public respect, and allegiance merely for earning a degree.

Most academics I know are uncomfortable with the notion that their degree might alienate them from their community of family and friends, so it is unfortunate if there is an elitism that demands a wall of separation between academia and the general public.

While earning a degree is worthy of respect–as with any difficult task–the real problem, for which “anti-intellectualism” is just the symptom, is that our culture has allowed the academic credential to wield a moral authority it never should have had in the first place. Sometimes a credential is just a credential.

jIr91 is, in my view, justified in asking whether the acdemic life is justified in view of the snobbery often found within academe. I also worked very hard to acquire a Ph.D. from a tier one institution. But the school where I taught, a “branch” of a flagship state university, the snobbery was often of the “reverse” kind, the kind that emerges where the stakes are always low. I witnessed the promotion of a colleague to the rank of Professor, this in spite of his not having a list of publications, nor even a Ph.D. And some institutions have had Presidents who had not earned doctorates. To be sure, some of these Presidents were also Noted Persons, but still their academic credentials were often nil. Myself, after I attained the doctorate in my field, I was rewarded with a raise of  $1,500.00 — total! –E.A.C.

It is my observation that much of the anti-intellectualism we see today stems from the divide between science and the current evangelical Christian movement.  For this movement to maintain its ant-evolution stance, it must continually discredit the academy, scientific discovery and rational thinking. Some of the groups that form the evangelical movement have become masters of communication and messaging strategy, which I believe affects our national discourse to an unwarranted degree.  If only the academy could be as effective! 

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Anti-evolution seems one (large) instance within
anti-science, the subset of general anti-intellectualism with which I’m most
familiar.   Anti-science can have
both well-organized, well-funded cores and sometimes-chaotic grassroots efforts.  The former do everything  they can to
harness the latter.   From
discussions with NCSE friends, anti-evolution seems somewhat chaotic and
locally driven, sometimes yielding results to make organizations cringe, like
Kitzmiller vs Dover School District. 
Other efforts are far better funded and organized, often via the
Internet.

Ideology or economics are common, powerful reasons for anti-science, but hardly
the only ones.  Reasons often combine:

http://i46.tinypic.com/204j13.jpg   PSY5

(PSY5, Dunning-Kruger appears often, as people with ~zero visible
expertise flatly tell well-known professors they are all wrong about their
lifelong research h, ending with “fix bayonets.”

For some powerful interests, none of: the following are remotely useful in the general
population:
1) Ethics and critical analysis of sometimes-fuzzy issues found  humanities.

[I’d guess Jefferson & Franklin would have loved my high
school AP history courses, because the teachers often gave conflicting sources
to read.  Some people would hate the
critical thinking so engendered.]

2) Inconvenient results from good social sciences research
that contradict ideological beliefs.

3) Really inconvenient results from biology and physical
sciences.

Since the academy in general has a long-deserved reputation
for seeking truth, some find it useful to discredit it in general, in any way
possible, even beyond specific interests.

In the US, read the Tobacco Archives: http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/  If your business depends on addicting
children, none of 1)-3) are useful.

Not only have they funded numerous PR and lobbying efforts,
but they certainly tried to discredit medical science and scientists, and
science in general, in some sense a way of “hiding in the crowd.”   See for example, the Advancement of Sound
Science Center, TASSC and Steve Milloy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advancement_of_Sound_Science_Center

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Milloy

Research on tobacco, acid rain, ozone holes, environmental pollution,
population biology, pharmaceutical studies, climate … often yield results that
are either ideologically-threatening or financially inconvenient, although some
thinktanks/PR agencies/lobbyists have been funded to help for decades.  Most thinktanks active in climate
anti-science can be found in the Tobacco Archives.  It can be very cost-effective to encourage
anti-science and anti-intellectualism. 
If you want to see a recent example of such, right here in CHE blogs,
see:

http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/guest-post-bottling-nonsense-mis-using-a-civil-platform

[I’m not an academic, having gone off to Bell Labs post-PhD,
 although I’ve given hundreds of lectures
at universities around the world, and have many academic friends in various
disciplines.  My coauthor is a
well-published, award-winning  Professor
of Chemistry and Chair of the Academic Misconduct committee at Ohio State,
rather relevant to the subject discussed there.]

That and the two related earlier posts by Pete Wood have together
accumulated almost 500 comments., a real outlier.   People
might study them and see if there is any trace of anti-intellectualism.  They might think whether this influx was a grass-roots
happening  or something stimulated
elsewhere in the sorts of blogs we called echo-chambers.

It is sad, but true that the Internet is simultaneously a
great tool for knowledge, and a great amplifier for anti-intellectualism.  Anti-evolution has a long history, but some
of the current anti-intellectualism seems much newer.

johnmashey -
 
“That and the two related earlier posts by Pete Wood have together accumulated almost 500 comments., a real outlier.  People might study them and see if there is any trace of anti-intellectualism.  They might think whether this influx was a grass-roots happening  or something stimulated elsewhere in the sorts of blogs we called echo-chambers.”

You mean like in this ‘echo-chamber’, johnmashey

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/08/john_mashey_replies_to_peter_w.php

If you look at the results of the Intel high school scientific research
contest, you will find that 2/3 of the finalists have recognizable Asian
surnames, (Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese etc.)
Our best hope is immigration from India and China, where intellectual activity is respected. Our college faculties were previously built up as a result of immigration of European intellectuals escaping from Hitler.

The history of America is a chronicle men of action, not intellectuals. Colonists cut down forests, introduced agriculture, and drove the Indians off their land. The result  of this heritage is a native anti-intellectualism that pervades traditional American culture. The class brain is a social outcast.
The recent rise of evangelical Christianity which also disrespects intellectual activity also reinforces the  traditional American anti-intellectualism.