The Responsibility of Intellectuals

In my view, this means that the com- the profession is deeply culpable.

Um, Noam Chomsky wrote a very famous essay called The Responsibility of Intellectuals back in 1967, um, and he argued back then that the university Breaches public trust if it doesn't expose the lies of governments, because intellectuals are in a position of unusual privilege in Western countries insofar as they have time, facilities, resources, training, et cetera, freedom of information, access to information, ability to publish.

They have all of these things on their side, and therefore much more than an average person, um, an intellectual, someone working in a university, has a particular responsibility to analyze and call out the li- the lies of government.

Um, he was writing this, uh, with respect to lots of so-called top, um, professors in the US just uncritically backing the Vietnam War and other atrocities of US foreign policy.