Scribes Without a Torah

The Treason of the Intellectuals is one of those books that is famous even though almost no one actually reads it. Julien Benda's title -- either in English translation or the original French, Le trahison des clercs -- has been a favorite shorthand in intellectual debates since it was published in 1927, invoked whenever one intellectual wants to accuse another of moral failure. In recent years, the liberal historian Anne Applebaum applied the phrase to conservative thinkers who supported Donald Trump; the far-left journalist Chris Hedges used it to denounce PEN, a writer's group that defends press freedom, for failing to support Julian Assange and WikiLeaks; and the late rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks used it to denounce students and faculty who silence controversial speakers on college campuses.