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?
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.
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.