Activism and Jewish Science

The folks at 36 Under 36 are an accomplished bunch, but The Jewish Week is laboring within a limited definition of Jewish activism: viz., stuff which yields a creative product or institution immediately appreciable by the Jewish lay public. But (with the exceptions of Ethan Tucker and Adam Kirsch) what this definition leaves out is the intellectual effort of Jewish academia, which never got anyone to make aliyah or become a mikvah habitué but - for all that - is of value. I wonder if the assumption might be that activists Act, while pure intellectuals don't. But that would be wrong.