Intellectualism isn't just a set of privileges, it's also a set of responsibilities. There's a lot of good reasons to question whether intellectuals at universities are correctly discharging their responsibilities to be worthy of the traditional privileges that go with it. It's, if not "anti-intellectual" then at least a betrayal of the basic principles, to assume that just because forms are maintained that substance must therefore be present. Accusing people who ask these questions willy-nilly of "anti-intellectualism" itself helps the decay of the intellectual system, because basic human nature is that if you allow someone an easy way to accrue privileges while failing to discharge their responsibilities, they will, and I see no reason why being "an intellectual" provides even the slightest resistance to that.

If you care about the intellectual system, the correct move is to hold their feet to the fire even moreso than the "anti-intellectuals", so than when the latter come calling, no fault can be found. Blindly protecting them in the long term will hurt them.

Privileges and responsibilities based on what? What privilege does a professor have, the ability to have a job even if he says something dumb?

It ain't the pay, and it sure isn't the social respect, so what exact privileges, and for that matter, responsibilities, do you expect "intellectuals" (which you're using to encompass universities and their staff, instead of people who happen to have degrees) to have?

In this particular case, the privilege of getting people who are angry at your conduct slimed with the argument-ending slur "anti-intellectual" is all the privilege I need for my case to hold. I would love to be able to leap to the defense of the intellectuals against the "anti-intellectuals", but part of the responsibility that comes with that privilege includes partaking of and propagating a certain culture of intellectual openness and freedom, which the academy has abrogated in toto. The only people left who think that the academy is free and open are the people who happen to espouse the exact philosophy and political beliefs that have closed the academy down; literally nobody else is fooled anymore.

If you believe otherwise, you can prove me wrong by scheduling a talk about a politically-sensitive topic that deviates from the dominant leftist beliefs in some way at a major university, and show me that you were accepted and treated respectfully. It will not even remotely do to convince me I'm wrong to just spray some words at me in a text box; at this point the evidence that the academy has become intellectually closed is so overwhelming that only the willful blindness granted to those on "your side" can fail to see it.