Africa, the American Intelligentsia, and the Shadow of Vietnam
In 1965, Charles Frankel, a philosopher and an assistant secretary of state in the Johnson administration, remarked that the role of intellectuals in international affairs had been curiously neglected. Since then, a greater sensitivity to the sociology of knowledge and to the resilience of intellectual orthodoxies has perhaps made students more aware of the power that stereotypes and analogies can exercise. Intellectuals, as Frankel noted, are the principal engineers and salespersons of the very language used in international relations, the creators and promoters of its symbols and concepts. His description of their activities merits extended quotation: