I: Definitions and Thumbnail History First off, it must be said that that is people whose chief concern is with ideas and thinking about, and usually writing about, ideas--that includes certain philosophers, certain literary people and historians, some social scientists, some political scientists, occasional scientists--have existed forever. But intellectuals, i.e., those who attempt to influence social and political events and reality directly with their ideas are a relatively recent phenomenon. Certainly Voltaire was one, and Diderot and Encyclopedists who aimed with reason to combat superstition and religious obscurantism were others. But they frequently acted individual not part of a self-conscious group or class of people. That concept and role are rather more recent. In Eastern Europe concept of an intelligentsia arose, an educated class who would use ideas, expressed in essays and journalism, literature, and drama, to combat autocratic and reactionary ideology of Czarism. In West, intellectuals an oppositional class, in battle with retrograde and repressive ideologies, came clearly into focus during anti-semitic Dreyfus in France. In an indispensable article, Susan Rubin Suleiman defines, flatly, French intellectuals as a category of people whose very existence such became recognized at time of Affair (117). One of intellectuals whose participation a Dreyfusard influenced his entire life was Jewish intellectual Julian Benda, best known for his La Trahison des clercs, in which he argued famously that the duty of intellectual was to defend universal values, over and above politics of moment (qtd. in Suleiman 118). What he saw at stake in Dreyfus Affair, in his later anti-fascism of 1930s was precisely defense of universal values--truth, justice, intellectual and social freedom-against particularist doctrines of racism, nationalism, and reasons of State (Suleiman 118). We cite Benda, not because he was sole or most outstanding participant in L'Affaire (Zola probably deserves that honor), but because those words ring out so boldly, and in so timely a fashion in Europe then and in America now. More to point, Dreyfus both inaugurated current use of term intellectual, according to Suleiman, and also collective intervention of intellectuals a self-conscious group in public affairs (121). Thus, day after Zola's J'Accuse appeared in Laurie (13 Jan. 1898) and sold 300,000 copies, a list of people appeared in that same newspaper calling for a new trial for Dreyfus (Kleeblatt 268). heading of list was called protestation des intellectuels and it included professional associations of signers: professor, writer, architect, member of Academy (Anatole France was only one), agrege, licencie in law, science, literature, and so on (Suleiman 121). That custom or method of protest against perceived injustices and outrages continues, of course, to this day and constitutes an avenue of expression for most intellectual workers who want to affect public discourse and action. It is an estimable tradition, and it is important to note where it came from and what its aims were historically. influence, or fallout, from that beginning was profound upon American (as well European) intellectuals. In his fine book New York Intellect, Thomas Bender points to two of America's most important intellectuals in twentieth century, William James and Edmund Wilson, directly responding to influence of Dreyfus Affair. The term 'intellectual,' Bender writes, entered political and cultural discourse in 1898, when Dreyfusards used it to name themselves and to claim by it a new sort of oppositional moral authority. Within three months, word appeared in America, in an editorial in Nation, and by 1900 it was being used in New York's Lower East Side, referring to those immigrants who, under settlement-house auspices or in cafe society, had formed study groups to incorporate into their lives American literature and culture. …