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Video of an Ideas Matter event held at MIT on September 22, 2011
In 1967, as the Vietnam War escalated, Noam Chomsky penned “The Responsibility of Intellectuals,” a stunning rebuke to scientists and scholars for their subservience to political power. Today we face a similar array of crises, from wars to escalating debt. What are the obligations of intellectuals in this day and age?
Joshua Cohen is co-editor of Boston Review, member of the faculty of Apple University, and Distinguished Senior Fellow in law, philosophy, and political science at University of California, Berkeley.
Noam Chomsky is an educator and linguist. He joined the University of Arizona in fall 2017, after several decades at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His most recent book is Notes on Resistance (with David Barsamian).
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“If ideas are discarded when no longer modish, could we not do the same with unfashionable words?”
The Israel-India worker deal resembles British indenture.
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