Giroux carves out a daunting project in his quest to create space for his emancipatory vision within a highly constrained, neo-liberal/neoconservative social, political, and cultural milieu. What motivates him is less a neo-Marxian drive to help establish the classless society than an American protest against the many forces that impede the exertion of a vigorous personal agency and a quest for radical egalitarianism for oppressed minorities. His utopian project, in other terms, represents the radical fulfillment of the American Revolution for the late twentieth century with significant input from twentieth-century European social theory. In Giroux's project, the teacher as transformative intellectual exercises considerable "civic courage" to combat the erosion of teacher power within the schools. Moreover, it encourages such teachers to ally with like minded social workers, clergy, community activists, parent groups, and others across disciplines and roles for the purpose of working toward the emancipatory vision of a transformed society.

Intellectuals of various types have particular social agendas and ideological motivations on Giroux's reading. Building on Gramsci's analysis, Giroux identifies critical, accommodating, hegemonic, and transformative intellectuals, all of which except the latter buttress dominant societal values in one way or another.

Critical intellectuals may posit a sharp critique against society, but in their detached posture, they tend toward a "consciously apolitical" stance. They view their intellectual activity beyond the fray of contemporary involvement, focusing instead on their professionalism and/or on their unique roles as "free-floating" intellectuals. Accommodating intellectuals "support the dominant society and its ruling groups" (p. 39) in their practices. By viewing its ideology as self-evident, they deny that their work has political power in "reifying" the taken-for-granted assumptions of the status quo. Hegemonic intellectuals "self-consciously define themselves through the forms of moral and intellectual leadership they provide for dominant groups and classes" (p. 39). They may serve as consultants for corporations, teach in business schools or schools of education, or departments of psychology. Their purpose is to provide intellectual resources to make "the system" function more effectively.