CHOMSKY on Academic Freedom--an interview

ecently, I mentioned an interview of linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky (M.I.T.) that appeared in an edition of the journal Thought & Action. (Chomsky interview Note: a pdf file)

Below, I offer a few brief excerpts of that interview. The headings and edits are my own (CW).

I have appended some related links. (I cannot resist highlighting one of them here:

On the stunning ignorance of Bush voters:
U of Maryland poll)

* * * * *
A NEW OPENNESS:

THOUGHT AND ACTION [T&A]: How would you describe the intellectual climate on the nation’s campuses…[especially after 9/11]?

CHOMSKY: In general, I think the campuses are like the country as a whole. [Ours]…is a very insular society. Most people don’t pay much attention to anything beyond…[our] borders.

But one effect of 9/11, which was very striking, was that there was enormous increase in people’s interest…in learning something about the outside world….

...People like me, who are giving talks all the time, can see it very dramatically. The number of invitations to give talks—political talks—shot up after 9/11. And audiences became much larger than they were before, all over the country. And the same is true of books…And that reflected itself on college campuses too….

THE EXTREMIST RIGHT-WING:

T & A: Were there other, perhaps different, reactions to 9/11?

CHOMSKY: There is an effect in the opposite direction, coming from an extremist, right wing that is trying to stifle discussion on campuses by imposing standards on what people are allowed to talk about. I think maybe 20 or so state legislatures are considering legislation—maybe some have passed it—…organizing students to monitor whether things that happen in the classroom meet the doctrinal standards of the right-wing extremists. A lot of this is focused on the Middle East departments…They’ve been more under attack than anyone, with the demand that they satisfy the orthodoxy of the doctrinaire right-wingers. [See The New McCarthyism in Academe (warning: this is a pdf file)]

These [right-wing] groups say they’re concerned about academic freedom, but it has nothing to do with academic freedom. It has to do with shutting down discussion…You can see that at Columbia right now, which is a striking case…. [See Debate on Academic Freedom]

WHO IS ACTUALLY HARASSED AT COLLEGES?:

T & A: What about the argument that conservatives are being discriminated against on the nation’s campuses?...

CHOMSKY: …[Conservatives] have not one particle of evidence for that. In fact, what they call “conservative”…[is really] “far right.” And it’s the far right that wants to discriminate….

Take one of the issues the right wing is focusing on, the claim that Israel’s right to exist is being threatened. [C. the recent right-wing worry that Christmas is under attack!] Is the right wing arguing that students and faculty who claim that Israel should have the rights of all other states are being silenced on campus? There’s an easy way to test that. And they don’t test it, because they know what the answer is going to be. Just do a poll of college faculty and see if more than .001 percent disagree with the simple proposition that Israel should have all the rights of any state in the international system. Everybody agrees with it.

The harassment on the nation’s campuses goes…[against leftists & radicals, not conservatives], and it is massive. Take Columbia University again. Edward Said, whom the right wing…hated, was subjected to ongoing harassment. He had to have police protection at his office, at his home. He had to have a buzzer in his home so he could call the police station. That went on all the time. I’ve been under police protection when I gave a talk on college campuses about the Middle East. But nobody’s complaining about that…. [See Wiki on Edward Said]

THE “THIEF! THIEF!” STRATEGY:

Actually, there’s a name for what the right wing is doing. It’s called the “’thief, thief!’ technique.” The idea is [that,] when you’re caught with your hand in somebody’s pocket, you point to someone else and…[shout], “Thief, thief!”...

The fact is, there has been extreme discrimination on campus, and very serious harassment, but it’s of anyone who questions the orthodoxy. [It’s] not against conservatives.

T & A: What is the orthodox consensus, what does it mean to deviate from it, and what are the costs of deviating?

CHOMSKY: The orthodoxy, as is usually the case, supports the U.S. government position. And the U.S. government position happens to be extremely rejectionist in the case of the Middle East. Since the mid-1970s, the U.S. alone has blocked the overwhelming international consensus that there should be a two-state settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian question. And anyone who points out this rejectionist stance or wants to discuss it often faces serious harassment.

…The nation’s intellectual leaders are intimidated.

…I’ve gotten to know a fair number of the police on campus and…[in Cambridge] because they’re often present when there’s a talk on campus. And it’s not just me. It is anyone who deviates marginally from the overwhelming orthodox consensus.


IS OUR FEAR OF TERRORISM UNREASONABLE?
WHY ARE WE A TARGET OF TERRORISTS?

T & A: …[M]any Americans, including large numbers of our students, are afraid of the possibility of terrorist attacks being carried out against civilian targets—

CHOMSKY: I’m a lot more afraid than they are, because I’ve been reading and writing about it for many years before 9/11….

…What students ought to be taught is what the reasons are for…[the very real threats we face]. For example, they ought to focus on the fact that…[U.S.] government policy is…increasing that threat….

[T]ake the invasion of Iraq. The U.S. intelligence services…informed the President a few weeks before the invasion that the invasion was likely to increase the threat of terror. It wasn’t unique to U.S. intelligence; this was being pointed out by intelligence agencies everywhere. And…that turned out to be correct. It did substantially increase the threat of terror….

T & A: Aren’t a lot of institutions, even the government, using that fear to chill debate on these issues?

CHOMSKY: …[T]hat’s not just true of the U.S. government. In the first interviews I had after 9/11,which were a couple of hours after the terrorist attacks took place, one thing I pointed out…is that every power system in the world is going to use this as an excuse to increase repression if they’re carrying out repression, or to control their own populations…So the Russians used it to step up their atrocities in Chechnya, and Israel used it to step up its repression in the West Bank….

[O]ther governments that weren’t carrying out violent repression used it to institute things that they call “protection against terrorism acts,” or something like that, to discipline and control their own populations. That’s the way power systems react….

…But, as I mentioned at the outset, another of the effects—and a major effect—of 9/11 in the United States, was quite the opposite. It was to open people’s minds, to make them think they’d better raise questions about what’s going on in the world….

DEMOCRACY AND FREE INQUIRY:

T & A: You’ve written about how institutions like the press—and presumably the academy—are used to control the population and to thwart democracy. But you’ve also paraphrased [early 20th-Century philosopher] John Dewey as saying that education is one means of combating the undermining of democracy. [See "Media Control" (Chomsky on Dewey, Lippman, and Democracy)]

CHOMSKY: That’s what John Dewey was hoping: that education would promote democracy. So, yes, in a free society, universities ought to be, schools too, for that matter, should be places where…faculty and students are encouraged to challenge, question, press the borders of inquiry, to be completely open to challenging received and accepted ideas. In fact, that’s the way the sciences work. The sciences wouldn’t survive if that wasn’t the atmosphere. And it should be the atmosphere throughout education.

But when you get to areas that reflect public policy, the hammer comes down and you get repression of challenges to authority. As in the cases we were discussing.

T & A: What can concerned faculty and staff do to further democracy and the open debate that you’re talking about?

CHOMSKY: Our colleges and universities can do exactly what is done necessarily in the sciences, [namely,] encourage faculty and students to question, to challenge, to press the borders of inquiry, to be quite open to asking questions about established doctrines.

I’m not suggesting that nobody does this. Many people do it. But there is pressure to conform. Sometimes it’s extreme, as in the…attacks on the colleges that we were talking about before. But it’s always there, more or less.

I can give you plenty of cases from personal experience…where dissident questioning faculty were essentially informed that they’d better shape up and keep to doctrinal orthodoxy or they’ll be out. Anyone in most universities can tell you about this—and it’s done in subtle ways…. It’s not, “I’m going to kick you out,” but, “You’re lacking in collegiality,” or something like this….

T & A: Is the intellectual community on college campuses challenging orthodoxy and promoting open discussion?

CHOMSKY: It varies with the institutions. In the sciences, I think it’s done very well, as far as I can see…In the sciences, you have to…[challenge orthodoxy], or the sciences will die….

FOCUSING ON OUR OWN ACTIONS:

…All of us are responsible for our own actions. That’s the most elementary moral principle you can imagine. So therefore there should be a focus on our own actions—what they were, what they have been, what we can do about them, and so on. But, on the contrary, overwhelmingly…[examination and criticism of our own nation’s actions] is marginalized, put to the side, and when it’s brought up it does elicit considerable hysteria….

T & A: …[A]re you worried that the national security state will curtail freedom of expression?

CHOMSKY: Well, it’s going in both directions. There is greater and greater success in marginalizing people and in reducing the formal democratic system to empty forms. The November election was an example. Very few people even had an idea what the stand of the candidates was on issues. For example, a majority of Bush voters thought that he supported the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, which is overwhelmingly supported by the U.S. population. [See U of Maryland poll]

That’s true in case after case, as careful studies have shown. All of that shows that the United States is becoming a kind of a failed state in which it has democratic forms but many pressures that converge to ensure its orderly function. That’s one tendency.

On the other hand, there are opposite tendencies: concern, engagement, openness on the part of the general public, and very surprising attitudes when you look at the polling results….

USEFUL & RELATED LINKS:

On Chomsky:
Wikipedia on Chomsky

On Academic Freedom and the so-called “Academic Bill of Rights”:
Wiki on Academic Freedom
Wiki on AAUP/Academic Freedom
Debate on Academic Freedom

On Edward Said:
Wiki on Edward Said

On the stunning ignorance of (Bush) voters:
U of Maryland poll

On Columbia U and attacks on its “Middle East” department:
The New McCarthyism in Academe (warning: this is a pdf file)

On Dewey and Democracy:
"Media Control" (Chomsky on Dewey, Lippman, and Democracy)