I've never pretended to be an intellectual, just yet another Princeton Ph.D interested in ideas.
When I tried to share ideas with tenured academics at local DC universities on the origins of American public diplomacy/WWI (no fee asked on my part), here are the answers (selected) I got, regarding my research work on an article "Janus-Faced Public Diplomacy: Creel and Lippmann During the Great War."
From an e-mail by a professor at Maryland University:
"John -- I appreciate your earnest interest in Creel and Lippmann [my link - jb]. But bombarding busy professors at the end of the semester is not in the best academic tradition, nor do we typically give feedback outside of established venues [jb emphasis] such as conferences and journal reviews, except perhaps to our closest colleagues with whom we have developed relations over many years. Rarely do I read drafts of scholarship, other than graduate student papers and dissertations, etc., so you should not feel offended
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or feel singled out if folks
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do not reply with suggestions for revision. I don't mean to imply this is an exclusive club, but I do think you are unrealistic to expect immediate and detailed responses to your work."
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Communications (from another professor [at Georgetown]) re the topic of the article:
Dear John Brown
Please forgive my tardiness in responding. I received a lot of emails about my piece in the NYT and another that appeared in the Wash Post on Sunday -- and then I traveled to a convention in New Orleans and then had to help prepare a large Seder for last night. I will get back to you this week [JB -- The author of the piece, whose father is cited in my WWI Creel-Lippmann annotated bibliography, never did, so far as I can tell get back to me].
Best, ...