activism and academia

The activism/academia question is very vexing, and one I am quite familiar
with as someone with a long activist background before going back to
school and becoming an academic.

My general impression is that activists look to academics for 2 things: 

1) inspiration and to confirm what they already think,
        and
2) structural analysis.

Activists as a rule do not look to academics for guidance in terms of
praxis, and this is mainly for good reason -- most academics don't know
the first thing about it.  Alinskyite organizing principles, or just any
activist with lots of experience, is a much better source of useful
information than a professor.

Academics, of course, look to activists to *look to them* for wisdom and
leadership.  Most do not get what they want.  There seems to be only a
limited number of authors that activists read and follow, starting with 
Noam Chomsky, and if you are not one of them, you are not given special
treatment.  This is one (clearly secondary) reason that academics stay to
themselves -- they just do not tend to get the sort of worshipful
treatment they think they deserve from activists.

BUT, the academic tendency toward analytical thinking is not nearly as
prevalent among activists as some may imagine.  Much of what happens is
based on emotion, loyalty -- in-group/out-group identity -- and other
such less than fully rational processes.  So either academics are seen as
irrelevant to movement activity, or are considered hostile if they are too
critical.  And of course if you engage in an analysis of those
non-rational processes, the activists tend to deny that it's true ("only
the opposition is non-rational, not us"), or again, simply see it as
irrelevant to their goals.

So having been on both sides, and having tried to occupy the middle
ground, I have no good answers to the problem.  I just see it as one of
those permanent contradictions that has to be worked on constantly, with
different outcomes given the situation.  If activists can restrain their
anti-intellectualism, and academics can restrain their sense of
superiority, the possibility for a constructive interaction at least
exists.

RH