An informative and issue-raising overview of the contribution of Noam Chomsky to the struggle for social justice.

According to Henry Giroux, the author of the piece,

Chomsky is fiercely critical of fashionable conservative and liberal attempts to divorce intellectual activities from politics and is quite frank in his notion that education both in and out of institutional schooling should be involved in the practice of freedom and not just the pursuit of truth. He has strongly argued that educators, artists, journalists and other intellectuals have a responsibility to provide students and the wider public with the knowledge and skills they need to be able to learn how to think rigorously, be self-reflective, and to develop the capacity to govern rather than be governed. But for Chomsky it is not enough to learn how to think critically. Engaged intellectuals must also develop an ethical imagination and sense of social responsibility necessary to make power accountable and to deepen the possibilities for everyone to live a life infused with freedom, liberty, decency, dignity and justice.

I do not think it is pretentious, indeed it is necessary in these conformist times, to ask ourselves if we deserve to be seen as critically-minded educators, as engaged public intellectuals committed to the struggle for freedom, democracy and justice?

Noam Chomsky and the Public Intellectual in Turbulent Times.

Thanks to Neal Terry for pointing out that Chomsky is giving a lecture in Durham  next week. These lectures are videoed and made available on the Durham Castle Lectures site

22 May 2014

Professor Noam Chomsky

“Surviving the 21^stCentury”

Can human beings survive the 21st Century without a major setback? Professor Noam Chomsky will address this question of global significance in this special Durham Castle Lecture.