Black Politics, Public Intellect and Rigor

“6 Scholars Who Are ‘Reimagining Black Politics’: There’s a world of urgent discourse beyond Dyson, West, and Gates.”

From Robin D.G. Kelley:
I don’t play pundit because I’m not interested in ‘influencing popular opinion’ if it means sacrificing analytical rigor. Our job as intellectuals is to ask the hard questions, interrogate inherited categories, take nothing as self-evident, and go to the root of the problem. That includes the work of addressing contemporary social crises. I’m concerned that if we persist in conflating relevance with popular, the form, or rather the forum, will become our main concern.

Thoughts?