If we are to talk of a ‘new’ intellectual movement, the question is begged: what happened to the ‘old’ intellectual movement? What happened to the thinkers who inspired and led our struggle against colonialism, apartheid and exploitation? In pursuit of answers to these questions, MISTRA hosted a roundtable in March 2015 on the theme ‘The Role of Intellectuals in the State-Society Nexus’. This book takes the roundtable’s inputs and debates into the public domain by recording the contributions of the main speakers, respondents, and questions from the floor.