The academy is defined by a fundamentally uncertain pursuit of certainty. The question of whether academic work is a sufficient form of engagement on its own is inseparable from the contradiction inherent to this pursuit. Like any properly academic question, it lends itself to a forum: a response is nearly obligatory for any professor in the humanities (at least), but it does not easily tolerate answers that bind upon all. This format allows its participants to dispense with both the difficulty of reviewing the many different traditions of responding to the question and with any pretence that there could be a single answer. As one line of response, engagement may take the form of producing academic work: of developing methods for research and languages for its expression that--while as objective as possible--are never pretended to offer the final word on objectivity and which thereby encourage others to think just as carefully for themselves. In this article, the author describes a form of engagement from the relatively unscientific practices typical of the public sphere. The sole promise of this form of engagement would be to pursue and to promote the pursuit of knowledge, as befits those who study, among other things, the history of every more partisan assurance. (Contains 26 notes.)