Arguing the World VIFF and Symposium: Public Intellectuals Today By Lezah Williamson

A joint venture between the Vancouver International Film Festival and the inaugural symposium Public Intellectuals Today brings us the film Arguing the World (1998).

Arguing the World depicts life of a number of New York intellectuals (Irving Howe, Nathan Glazer, Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol) who all passionately believed that ideas can change the world - most notably, their ideas.

Arguing the World traces the lives of these men from the immigrant neighbourhoods of their youth, through college, to their rise to prominence through their roles as political and cultural critics from the Cold War through to the Regan era.