Long gone, says Nicholas Kristof, are the days of academics making a difference in the public sphere. Today’s scholars are either pigeonholed into jargon-heavy and paywall-protected academic journals, or their politics are too radically left to hold a viable position in mainstream discourse.

In a rebuttal, Corey Robin points to the many academics and intellectuals who do indeed have a presence in the public sphere, and who are using online criticism as their modus operandi. Contemporary academics (and younger scholars especially) are now publishing in an array of online magazines and blogs and are being taken seriously.

Robin depicts the authors of new media as brave interlocutors, taking career risks by spending their precious time writing for widely-accessible venues. And, he notes, making one’s voice heard is more feasible now than in generations past, since interfaces like Tumblr and Twitter offer unique “baby steps” to making it into more well-known outlets.