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Tired of Winning | The Point Magazine

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If the intellectual at the think tank was the assistant to the legislator, here she has become the willing tool of the activist.

This essay appears in a special symposium on intellectuals, which is entirely composed of essays by the editors of The Point. Click here to read all of the essays from the symposium. My first full-time job after college was with the Center for American Progress, a policy institute in Washington, D.C. The Center was about a year old when I began working there, at the beginning of 2004. It was known as a “think tank.” I did not know what went on at a think tank, but the words conjured an institution dedicated to “the transformation of genius into practical power,” which Emerson had convinced me

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