This present study aimed to analyze the trajectories of agents identified with the renewal current of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), formed in the late 1970s and early 1980s by a group of militants who were identified, among other elements, by intellectual prestige, the search for renewal of Marxism and the defense of democracy as a universal value. Among these agents, those who obtained greater prestige and recognition were those who stopped being partisan intellectuals and became university intellectuals, which was done through the existence of a series of tensions due to their coexistence with the standard of intellectual excellence that was imposed at the time, strongly based on the North American model of science. Therefore, the position occupied by these agents in the university space stands out, as well as the way in which they viewed their activities in this space and the general nature of their works, comparing them with the intelectual elites of this same period.