Responsibility of Intellectuals: Reflections by Noam Chomsky and Others after 50 years

158 Pages·2019·3.518 MB·English

by  Nicholas Allott, Chris Knight, Neil Smith, Noam Chomsky

The Responsibility of Intellectuals

The Responsibility
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Copyright, Collections and the Image
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Reflections by Noam Chomsky and others
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after 50 years
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Edited by
Nicholas Allott, Chris Knight and Neil Smith
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First published in 2019 by
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Allott, N., Knight, C. and Smith, N. (eds). The Responsibility of
Intellectuals: Reflections by Noam Chomsky and others after
50 years. London: UCL Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.14324/
111.9781787355514
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ISBN: 978-1-78735-553-8 (Hbk.)
ISBN: 978-1-78735-552-1 (Pbk.)
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787355514
Contents
List of figures vii
Contributors viii
Preface x
Introduction: ‘The Responsibility of Intellectuals’: what it
does and does not say 1
Nicholas Allott
Remarks on the historical context of the essay ‘The
Responsibility of Intellectuals’ 5
Noam Chomsky
1 Reflections on Chomsky’s ‘The Responsibility of Intellectuals’ 7
Neil Smith and Amahl Smith
2 ‘I don’t want no peace’– a black, Jewish activist’s take on the
responsibility of intellectuals 26
Jackie Walker
3 The responsibility of intellectuals in the era of bounded
rationality and Democracy for Realists 32
Nicholas Allott
4 The propaganda model and the British nuclear weapons debate 45
Milan Rai
5 Speaking truth to power – from within the heart of the empire 53
Chris Knight
6 The abdication of responsibility 71
Craig Murray
7 Replies and commentary 75
Noam Chomsky
CoNtENtS v
8 Conference Q&A 102
Noam Chomsky
Bibliography 121
Index 138
vi tHE RESPoNSIBILItY oF INtELLECtUALS
List of figures
Fig. 5.1 Jerome Wiesner (far left), the scientist who recruited
Chomsky to MIT, with Defense Secretary Robert
McNamara and Vice-President Lyndon Johnson in
the White House, 1961. (Courtesy of White House
Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library
and Museum, Boston. Photo: Abbie Rowe) 64
Fig. 5.2 Preparation for nuclear war: the SAGE (Semi-
Automatic Ground Environment) air defense system.
In the 1960s, the Pentagon sponsored linguists in
the hope of making such computer systems easier
to use. (Photo: Andreas Feininger/The LIFE Picture
Collection/Getty Images) 64
Fig. 5.3 Protesters demonstrate outside one of MIT’s nuclear
missile laboratories, November 1969. (Courtesy of
MIT Museum, Cambridge, MA) 65
Fig. 5.4 Police disperse protesters, November 1969. (Courtesy
of MIT Museum, Cambridge, MA) 65
Fig. 5.5 Building the US nuclear stockpile: General James
McCormack (in uniform), a future vice-president at
MIT, next to Robert Oppenheimer (second on the
left), on the way to Los Alamos, 1947. (Photo: US
Dept of Energy, Washington, DC) 66
Fig. 5.6 Former MIT Provost, and future Director of the CIA,
John Deutch at the Pentagon. (Photo: James E.
Jackson, 12 April 1993. US Department of Defense,
Washington, DC. The appearance of US Department
of Defense (DoD) visual information does not imply or
constitute DoD endorsement) 66
LISt oF FIgURES vii
Contributors
Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and laureate professor at the University of
Arizona, and probably the most prominent linguist in history. His ideas
have revolutionised the study of language and have had a profound
impact on psychology, philosophy and intellectual life more broadly. He
is also a longstanding political activist and leading critic of US foreign
policy. His political work includes many books, hundreds of articles, and
countless speeches, interviews, letters and emails.
Nicholas Allott is senior lecturer in English language at the University
of Oslo. Previously he has been research fellow at CSMN, University
of Oslo, and a teaching fellow at UCL, where he completed his PhD in
linguistics in 2008. His research interests include pragmatics, semantics
of natural languages, legal language and interpretation, and philosophy
of linguistics. He is co-author of Chomsky: Ideas and Ideals (Cambridge
University Press, 2016).
Chris Knight is a research fellow at UCL, a longstanding political
activist and the author of Blood Relations: Menstruation and the Origins
of Culture (Yale University Press, 1995) and Decoding Chomsky: Science
and Revolutionary Politics (Yale University Press, 2016). He is co-founder
of EVOLANG, the interdisciplinary conference series on the evolution of
language, and has co-edited several books on human cultural origins.
Craig Murray is a writer and activist. He is the author of Murder in
Samarkand (Mainstream Publishing, 2006) and other non-fiction best-
sellers, and was the Rector of Dundee University. He became well known
to the public when he resigned as British ambassador to Uzbekistan
in protest against British collusion with the Uzbek dictatorship during
the ‘war on terror’. For this act of whistleblowing, he received the Sam
Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence in 2006.
Milan Rai is a longstanding anti-war activist and writer. He is the author
of several books including Chomsky’s Politics (Verso, 1995), the only
viii tHE RESPoNSIBILItY oF INtELLECtUALS
monograph on the subject, and 7/7: The London Bombings, Islam and the
Iraq War (Pluto, 2006). He has been co-editor of Peace News since 2007.
Amahl Smith is a charity finance director. He is a former treasurer
of Amnesty International UK and of the Business and Human Rights
Resource Centre.
Neil Smith is emeritus professor of linguistics at UCL. His first career was
as an Africanist and from 1964 to 1972 he was Lecturer in West African
languages at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. He was
then appointed head of linguistics at UCL, a position he kept until his
retirement in 2006. He is best known for his research on first language
acquisition, especially the acquisition of phonology; for his investiga-
tion over many years into the remarkable abilities of a polyglot savant,
Christopher; and for his work on Chomsky. He is co-author of Chomsky:
Ideas and Ideals (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and has also written
a number of books of essays popularising linguistics.
Jackie Walker is a black, Jewish activist and author, a founding member
of Jewish Voice for Labour, a defender of Palestinian rights, a long-
standing campaigner against racism and the former Vice-Chair of
Momentum, the left-wing movement in the British Labour Party. Author
of the acclaimed family memoir Pilgrim State (Sceptre, 2008), she has
recently staged a one-woman show, The Lynching, designed to combat
racism – including antisemitism – in certain sectors of British political
life. Like Chomsky, Walker has been criticised for voicing perspectives on
Israel and aspects of Jewish history that prominent supporters of Israel
have described as controversial or even antisemitic. In 2016, allegations
of this kind, which Walker strongly rejects, led to her suspension from the
Labour Party. Chomsky is one of a number of Jewish intellectuals to have
lent public support to her campaign to be reinstated.
CoNtRIBUtoRS ix