People enter into academia for one of two reasons-- to explore and create intellectual dialogue or to assimilate into the power structure. The great thoughts that are found coming from the words of people like bell hooks and Cornel West, who represent the intellectual academe and the celebrity of academia,help to shape at least part of the dialogue that can be found on the national and international scene. These individuals have sharpened their voices in order to render messages to the masses that are meant to help bring about profound and fundamental change in humanity and the way in which the world operates.

These figures use the stepping stool of the academy to buffer their entrance into the realm of public influence.When Cornel West is called a public intellectual, this means that his scholarship is geared towards enriching humanity and making better the conditions under which people are forced to exist.In that light, people such as bell hooks and Cornel West serve as the conscience of the nation,constantly reminding them of their humanity and their responsibilities to it. You can tell this, because their language is simplified, it is meant to be absorbed by masses, consumed and put to use in their everyday lives. Oftentimes, the academy becomes quite secondary to this urge to spread the manna of knowledge and thought among the people. It encompasses what Cornel West calls parrhesia—the act of speaking simply—fearless and unintimidated speech.

This is the language of not only intellect, but especially that of the public intellectual. This is the most useful aspect of the academy. To look at all of the voices that have come up through the academy and who now have taken their place as public intellectuals--- besides hooks and West, Michelle Wallace, Henry Louis Gates, Howard Zinn, Germaine Greer, Angela Davis, Ward Churchill, Noam Chomsky,Kimberley Williams Crenshaw, John Henrik Clarke. It is in this spirit that Cornel West delivered his talk “Revitalizing Democracy At Home and Abroad” at the the Commonwealth Club.