you draw out really well. thank you. thank you. thank you for being here. yeah, thank you. thank you for the wonderful questions. thank lily. and thank you to politics and prose and to c-span, because who's going togood evening, eve.

my name is sean jacobs. i'm the director of the graduate and international affairs at the new school, which is co-hosting book launch and panel discussion with current affairs on the ideas and work of noam chomsky. before i hand over to nathan robinson the editor in chief of current affairs magazine and the coauthor of the book, dr. i wanted to say a few words about international affairs gpa.

i started. 2001 and our program, which covers an m.a. and a short to many degrees blend theory with hands on experience to help students become add to bring that thoughtful global practitioners who can work towards a more inclusive equal and sustainable world, please visit our page on the new school website to find out more our program. and also we have fliers outside if you want to grab them like with all events at new school, we are guided by the new school community agreements which guys create which guides for creating a respectful, supportive learning environment. there's much to say about the incredible noam chomsky and his vast contribution to and struggle, but i will leave that to nathan and our panel. so let me introduce nathan, quickly, and you will take it from here. nathan robinson, co-founder and editor in of current affairs magazine. he is in new orleans and is the

author why you should be a specialist and responding to the right. over to you, nathan. thank you so much, shawn. and thanks to new school. thanks to jasmine and to kate at the new school for our event tonight and to postman books who are selling copies of. not just the new book but can i just and but but also all of our panelists have written superb books and they're all on sale outside thanks to c-span who are here filming this event tonight. also, i'd like to thank denis moynihan of democracy now! who was very helpful in arranging this and. sarah bushnell of penguin press is here and she is the editor

without whom this book would be much less readable and, accessible. so we're here tonight because you know this this book, myth of american idealism was released. i coauthored it with professor noam chomsky. it was one of the highlights of life, my writing life. but unfortunately, i mean, during the process near near the end of putting this book together with professor chomsky, his health declined and he is unable to continue making public appearances. so when the came out, when it finally came out, we thought, well, one thing we could do is we could convene a panel of people who are intimately familiar with his life and work to talk about it and talk about why they find his contributions. so valuable. i just want to say why, you know, for me for me personally, what that is just to give you a

little bit of the of the background, i run this magazine current affairs. we can subscribe outside, if you like. we have a special discount for people who have attended this. this where an independent nonprofit lefty magazine we're very inspired the work of noam chomsky, who i was introduced to in high. someone gave me a copy of failed and i had the experience that a lot of people have when they first encounter chomsky, which is, i think you would describe it as as kind of eye opening what he did. in addition to being one of the most cited scholars in cognitive science and linguistics of all time. what he did in the realm of politics in foreign policy was meticulously expose propaganda and mythology and do so in a way that really deeply challenges a lot of what we're what we're

taught. and it's eye opening because he using, you know, incredible forensic analysis and, deep, deep factual research to expose is a lot of the things that we might assume to true and that we here are true as as not being true. and it can be a very disturbing experience. i think. i think book i keep accidentally people i hope you enjoy the book and then realizing that the book isn't that enjoyable. i hope you find the book valuable. what i've started saying now because i think that's that's the truth is that think that what chomsky does is he he shows us the world as it as it really is and it's a it's a very dark picture. often it can be a hopeful picture because it celebrates the work of activist movements. but it shows that there are many, many horrors in this world and many, many crimes committed by our own government that we often don't face up to. and so i i was lucky enough, john hawley, who's who's in the room, introduced, actually introduced professor chomsky to,

current affairs. so he's set off the chain of events that led to this book and therefore this event. and as a result of chomsky subscribed to our magazine and then would complain to me personally when the magazine did not arrive, which was great. and on the one hand it was embarrassing because he would say the journal is not. and and could you please send it? so i as many of you, i'm sure, have corresponded with professor charles, get some point in your life because he's famously open to interacting with anyone, a very egalitarian approach to people. and so i struck up a correspondence with him. i interviewed him a couple of times, the magazine, which was incredible. and then i got i got really bold and i asked at one point, you know, would you be willing to collaborate a book project? and he said, yes. and so we went back and forth with with drafts and what i really wanted do and the reason i asked him is because, as i say, i find his his message and his critique so important,

challenging. and i wanted, you know, a new generation of readers to be exposed to it and to have something that really very powerfully summed up his thoughts on a number of topics. so so the book goes through his analysis of it goes through lots of different of the world and sort of shows how things are. so i want to talk today our with our panelists about about professor chomsky's life and life and work why they find it valuable their interactions with him so are joined today by first bev stohl who ran professor chomsky's office at the massachusetts institute of technology for over 20 years. author a delightful blog about her experiences in professor chomsky's office and, a memoir. chomsky and me, which is available outside available from or books. and so you should that up. check that out. victor pickard of the annenberg school of communications at the

university of pennsylvania. victor is a leading analyst of the media. he's the author of america's battle media, democracy and democracy without journalism. we are also joined by greg grandin. he has, a historian at yale university, the author of a number of books, including kissinger's shadow empires workshop, fordlandia and end the myth, which won the pulitzer prize. and finally, we are joined by goodman, the host of democracy now for america's leading independent news program, 1996. amy goodman is the author of six books and the winner of gandhi peace award and the i.f. stone medal for journalism. so please welcome our wonderful panel here. so, bev, we're starting to. so if everyone just make sure to speak directly to mike so we can get capture everything here.

so tell us, you tell us about when you first came to work and, professor chomsky's office. you entered a world that i think of as chomsky world, and it a remarkable experience. tell us a little bit about chomsky world. so why is that split that? yeah, i think there's a just a switch testing. yeah. okay. so i actually it was supposed to be my easy job because i was going off to visit to finish a master's degree in psych but somebody interviewed me it was actually john's father interviewed me so i didn't even noam until my third day of work. it was like an arranged marriage, like who is? he. what if they don't like it? what if we get along? what will happen? you know. but it was a weird place. i had worked at m.i.t. graduate student programs. and i walked in here and i said, where i. this is not an mit. it was this old throwback like

say that they put the old renegade professors in this old building. 20 that was pretty much ready to to over. so i looked around and i said, what is? this artwork what is this person that i was only going to stay two years to do my masters and there was el salvadorian priest cut off, held by a grim reaper and were bronzed miners talking about the chilean miners who were percy. i learned this stuff over years and used to kind of clean everything off and not really look at it, you know? so i knew i was in a different world. this was not my world. so. yeah. and there was, there was a poster of palestine with a big x through it saying return to sender no longer. yeah, no longer here. so and a lot of books because the cover of book is a picture

of is a drawing of all of the overflowing in the obvious stacks of books stacks of papers, stacks in his office outside the office in another down the street. yeah. can you tell us a little bit about, you know, professor chomsky is kind of famous for the of his activity, you know, not only revolutionizing, but producing, you know, hundreds of books, politics, all of the correspondence with public. you tell us a bit about his kind of day to day work, day to day and night to night. yeah, i think he went to sleep at 3 a.m. maybe. i don't know if you've ever gotten the call from him, amy, at 1 a.m., but our librarian, when he couldn't figure something out and at the end, she said, do you know what time it is? he said, no, it was 130 in the morning by the time they finished and then he he started working again at eight. and in fact, he told that he if he had a problem, something he even worked while he was sleeping. so he would put that issue in

his head and say, okay this is a problem i want to work out and then i'm going to go to sleep. and in the morning there was in fact, he lost his car once after an event because he was so deep in thought and in fact, i should tell you that when you meet, it's not him until he arrives fully into his body, because his mind is somewhere else. and left a place once couldn't find his car, went home and said, okay, that's my problem i'm putting it in my mind and in his sleep he saw two street signs and that's where he found his car. the next day. and it's just a little bit about his interactions with the public because you write in your book about the wide of people who came through office. we had about a thousand emails a day, plus letters of letters yeah, letters. we had letters back then. and i mean, he was nothing but kind, nothing but compassionate, nothing. but he was a real thing. there was a time and i'm going to throw amy under a little bus

here. you don't mind? let's do him. but, amy, many. when noam was really busy going in new and he'd say, oh, i'm sorry tell amy. and i think it was a big act, by the way, that he made me think that he was going do what i. and so he said telling me i can't do her show and. i'm there. i'm just too exhausted. and amy, he would come back and say, amy kidnaped me again. so i knew it was a bunch of baloney because he couldn't be kidnaped. but there was a time when they gave a talk. i'll never forget. and this is how he affects other people. we were in harvard square. laura and i were there. and amy and noam given a talk to some students at harvard and we walked back to an open pen which had all of these these glass windows. and people were going by doing a double take. and this young man came in. the father had little girl with him, and he saw noam and amy, and he started to cry. and i cry every time i think about this. and he said, i just wanted to the two of you. he said, his daughter.

these are the two, two of the most important people who want to save our democracy and find peace for us. and he he he introduced them to his and she shook their hand. laura and i, of course, were crying because i cry all the time my book is all about crying. and at the very end, not to give it away, but i burst into tears. so yeah. and that was not an uncommon effect that he had on people. this course, this voluminous correspondence the public if people know a few months ago there was a scare that now might have passed and what happened during that was an immediate of people who said encountering noam chomsky changed my life. he i emailed him when i was 17 years old with a dumb question and he replied and he took me seriously. and that was, that was very common. yeah. they would come to my, my, at my desk after i usually had to calm people down before they went in. they were going to, to talk to and i'd say just calm down, calm

down. this is a human being. i've him in your life. he goes to stores and things don't worry about it. so. so, yeah, they were they were very nervous and. i forget what i was going to say. so you have to say that again, i was just saying that, you know, the feedback from people about, you know, his affect, they would come out they would come out and say after, say a 24 minute meeting with him and they would say 24 minutes. he just changed life. and i said, imagine 24 years. yeah, yeah. so yeah. that's how many i had. i it was a wild ride. i never signed up for it. did you pass the mike down to amy? let's. so i would love it if you could tell us you first encountered noam chomsky. well, it actually before i was born, because my parents and noam went to camp together, grew up together. and it was a place called masada

not to be confused with most god. it was a hebrew camp and. my dad and noam were bunkmate. dad would always say to me later, how's noam chomsky? have you talked to him recently? they only spoke hebrew at the camp so that my parents, their whole lives, spoke hebrew to each and my mom. describe how she would see over the horizon and would come nomes father, who was a us who is a hebrew linguist, and how distinguished he looked when he was coming to visit noam, who's a bit a funny story, and my father had described to me how noam cutler were something beat him and i so i don't know told this story and i was in interviewing russell brand for the for democracy now!

and sat down and began to talk and he said is it true that noam chomsky bit your father. so i said, well, you know, we're on the air. and so then because another journalist heard this in the states, they asked noam this question. noam called me, he said, how could you possibly say so? i said, no, we're going to change. i'm going to say, you were known my father described to me in camp as the as his bunkmate with biting criticism. okay. yeah so wait, wait. can clarify, is it true that noam chomsky, your father. i'm not. i cannot confirm or deny. but anyway, it was wonderful to know. known for all of these years. can you tell us a little bit about your exposure to his obviously the work you do at democracy now! is kind of deeply influenced and aligned with his kind of

analysis of the world. can you talk about that? well, you know, i was going back to the first interviews i did with them, and democracy now! is 28 years old. back in 1996, the first year, the prime minister of israel i think his name was benjamin netanyahu at the time was an address to a joint session of congress at. the time and we called noam and i had a conversation about clinton, netanyahu and the joint address to congress isn't remarkable. in fact, noam would often say he was around the world to give speeches. these were a scheduled years in advance. and when they would say, can we have a title, he always knew he was safe to say the crisis. the middle east. yeah, the current crisis. the middle east.

but i would say in addition to all the different issues we discussed with. no, i mean, in finding him back talking to you so many times to try to book interviews with him, tracking him whether he was in berkeley, california, i we needed to talk to him. we figured out he was in berkeley i had some contact on, a press release. i saw a phone number called that number. and clearly they were in a car i could hear known. so i say, say, could you put noam on the phone? noam, can you join us tomorrow? and he said it would be at what democracy now! is at eight. at five in the morning. i said that would be perfect. i can't imagine you have something else or calling him once in turkey when he went to stand with the publisher who was going to for publishing his work and wanted to be with him in court. and when we heard this, we called him and i think he said is four in the morning. i said that would be again a perfect time.

no to have this conversation. but i think among ways he had the greatest effect aside personally how he how important he was in in analysis of the world was around east timor for us. i went first went to east timor in 1990 i went with michael, a great journalist allan, nairn, who was actually going to guam, cover a case between a mother and a daughter. the mother was a legislator, the daughter was a lawyer, and she was suing her mother because her mother was going to try to outlaw abortion. and why was interesting to the united states, because it was a catholic territory was that this case could go to the u.s. supreme court. it was a u.s. territory and it could overturn years ago roe v

wade. this was in 1990. and so going there we thought. oh, that is just a hop, skip and a jump away from this place that no chance persky has written about for years. east timor so could go from guam if it was possible to get into east timor because never let the of east timor die no matter what else she was writing about, he would talk about, he would bring up east timor. and i think this educated people all over the world. so we went to east timor in 1990 and then back in 1991, i mean, timor, you know, was a it was a portuguese colony for many, many years. then portugal, when it its empire in 1974, east was going to become at the time the newest

nation in, the world, except that indonesia then invaded it, was actually nome's birthday, december, december 7th, 1975, but they didn't invade until. they were able to meet with then president ford and secretary of state kissinger. they came to jakarta, met with suharto, gave the go ahead for the invasion because suharto afraid if he invaded east timor and was getting from the united states they would cut off the weapons flow. kissinger and ford assured him that the relationship would continue. they flew off to meet another dictator, ferdinand marcos, and indonesia invaded east the small half island by land by air and by sea. 90% of the weapons used were

from the united states indonesian army, the fourth largest in the world was trained, financed and armed by the united states. and from december 7th,. 1975 until 1999, indonesia committed one of the great genocides the late 20th century, killed off a third of the population of east timor. i learned all from noam so. we went in 1990 and then in 1991 went back because we heard, for the first time ever, the u.n. was going to send a delegation in to east timor. and we thought this is a critical to see what would happen. and we went in october of 1991, fully armed with all the information and noam had been writing about for so long, as well as writings of timorese themselves in their testimonies, who got out and when we got there, we to the main church in

dili, the capital of east timor, and we heard that the indonesian military surrounded the church. they shot a young man who had taken refuge there and the next day was the funeral a thousand timorese marched to the santa cruz cemetery and because they expected delegation to come, everyone out of their schools, their homes. this is what happened with this young man, because wanted to be protected, be in the churches timor so that they wouldn't be arrested before they could talk to the delegation then we learned that the u.n. canceled the delegation and at the behest of the united states and it was november 12th, as we covered people deciding to march way through the streets of dili to the santa cruz cemetery. the indonesian military armed with us and teens marched down the street. thousands of timorese had

bravely gone to the cemetery to, honor the young people who had been buried there and the indonesian military opened fire, gunning people down from right to left, killing more than 250 timorese. on that day. it one of actually not the one of not even the worst in east timor. we continue to cover it through those years they beat us up that day. they lined up in firing squad fashion to go after alan and i. but we were able to get out because we said that we were from the same country, their weapons were from. if they killed us, they would have to pay price for killing us. they understood they never had to pay for killing the timorese. and this is something we clearly understood from all that noam had taught us about. and we covered east timor for many years and.

in 1999, the u.n., a referendum for the people of east timor to decide whether they wanted be a part of indonesia or to be an independent nation. and we tried to get in to this referendum and i was detained twice and deported. allan made it through as the people of east timor voted. indonesia burned of east timor to the ground, killed another thousand timorese. they voted for their freedom. the u.n. would control it for three years. and then in may of 2002, we were able to go back to timor that night, did a broadcast the day of their independence and we called noam and noam said. i never believe that this moment would come telling us the truth though he it showed how remarkable he was because for

all of those decades that he covered east that he wrote about east timor and the fact that he said he had did not really have hope that the people of east would be free and he continued to educate all over the world. so it was just about. xanana gusmao had been imprisoned by the indonesian military for years ascended the stage speaking and four languages would make noam proud, putting everyone else to shame. and he unfurled the flag of the democratic republic of timor. there was a fireworks. you could see the light riffles acted in the tear stained faces of. the surviving people of east timor and we talked to noam at that moment and thanked him for

shining a light for people outside of timor, had the bravest were the people of timor, noam said he wished he could be there at that moment. that's what noam chomsky means to me. you've told us there are about, you know, a case which professor chomsky documented exposed wouldn't let go, you know, a terrible atrocity committed with u.s. complicity. um that's something that as i was, you know, putting this book together with, you know, just remarkable, not just a single issue, but in every all around the world, you know, he they he has voluminous work on haiti, voluminous work on it. you know his vietnam war books documenting things that were left out everywhere. i mean, as i was, i was i was sifting through the sources. i would realize that there were things in chomsky's that were in no other. i mean, they were true.

i mean, but he was only person who'd collected this thing from the newspaper or who, you know, remembered this even as everyone else sort of moved on from from things you've interviewed him perhaps more, probably more than anyone else ever, over the course of your time, democracy now! can you just tell us, you know, what is it that you think about his his voice and, his analysis? so so powerful that that caused you to him back to the program. so times because you think people need to hear it first of all he not only a great scholar, he was an activist. you know, he together with the great historian, howard zinn, who wrote of people's history of the united states, protested, only wrote about vietnam, but protested the war. vietnam, in fact, noam said that at that time he thought he could be imprisoned for rest of his life, and he prepared with his wife that that could happen. he had three small children, but

he willing to take that risk. so he was an activist and a great scholar and think he brought that to our conversations through all those years and his love also of book learning. remember visiting noam when moved into his new offices? mit i think the architect said he actually had noam in mind idea that noam would be living in his building. meanwhile, i couldn't say that, well, noam was going nuts in this new office because. i think the walls were all angled and so they were tilted, he said. am i supposed to put up bookshelves? can't. it was just the place already in the old army barracks that he had his office. and i'm sure that you were there forever piles books, but at least there were also he said this is an impossible military. how could i be how could i be

assigned this office? his love of books, love of the world, his deep optimism about, the world that despite the horror of what he covered from vietnam in his consistency, whether he was taking on in indonesia the largest muslim country in the world, its occupation of and genocide in east timor, or whether he was taking on israel and taking the occupation, taking the slaughter there. he was extremely consistent and he felt very clearly that. his scholarship, his this is what he could offer the world and i think he served as a model to his own family and his own children. and them and everyone else.

yeah. and one of the sort of common misconceptions about chomsky is you often wielded in bad faith as the that, you know, he's solely a critic of the united states government and is an apologist for other regimes, but actually, as i was, you know, combing through his life's work, you find him signing petitions all the time for dissidents, other countries, whether it's turkey, he was criticizing, you know, ortega in nicaragua or even even criticizing hugo chavez at the point that he infringed civil liberties. because as you point out, he was consistent in having a libertarian approach that was critical of all authoritarianism wherever it popped up in a friend to dissidents around the world. greg i want to i'd love bring you in here maybe you could talk about you know if you could perhaps summarize what you think professor chomsky is kind of a critique of us power is if you

could give us a little intro what you think he contributes to our understanding of arc of country. well it's it's it's multi-site sided and it's it's it's quite commonly hated in many ways but i think it's also important to point that noam chomsky is, is his work in linguistic books is really i mean, this is a terrific panel. and it would have been we didn't get a linguist. we didn't had a linguist, which course is what in some ways empowered. chomsky to to for six decades, to be able to to to be consistent, to be to speak truth to power. even though i don't think he like didn't like that phrase because he said power knows the power doesn't know how it doesn't it? but chomsky's revolution in the field of linguistics is just ongoing in of its in terms of its transformation of analytical everything from analytical philosophy to to artificial intelligence is just is just was

just off just off the charts and and that, i think, made him despite the criticism that he faced for his his his insists on holding united states up to a standard, you know, it allowed that that kind of consistency throughout the course of his career. i'm my understanding that is that when i when i to noam he kind of almost talked about his understanding of power as formed almost you know you know entirely all at once you know without and hadn't changed over time. it was formed during world war two listening to hitler on the radio. they couldn't understand the german, but he could understand the tone of the voice and the menace he grew up in a and jewish community in the outskirts of philadelphia and and his uncle and he became

politically became an anarchist through through the way he tells through his his his to his relationship with an uncle him to new york. and he went to he was sold papers on 72nd street. right. was the 72nd street. i was just going to say that, you know, i was just passing 72nd street. the other day. and i always think of noam in between 72nd and 73rd, there is a new paper stand. and then behind 72nd to 71st, there's newspaper stand gnomes. uncle, the one south of the subway station and said if he ran the one north of it, he would have never been educated as he was, because that when everyone ran and got newspapers and ran off the behind, it wasn't quite as popular. and so everyone would sit there or stand there, read the paper, discuss it. and he it was where he was first politicized, like when he was ten years old. and this that then and then apparently his uncle also took him to a socialist, an anarchist

publishing houses the lower east side and he was exposed a certain kind of world view which claimed grounded him and and framed his politics from the beginning. it was in the 1960s with vietnam. i think he became he became most actively political. although i did find in a j star search or proquest. i think his first published political opinion. it was an open letter to president kennedy protesting the bay of pigs and if you actually if you actually read it lot like a lot of many of the signatures are you know middle standard left liberals of the time. you know, john rawls and stewart, you and timothy leary is on it. lewis, lewis, mumford and you know, noam chomsky and the text, the letter to kennedy is quite conservative. it accepts a lot of the terms. the cold war and i, i, i actually i asked him once, i said, you know, i asked him about that. he said, you have to understand the the degree of repression and

and, and and and how dissent wasn't allowed in the early 1960s. so it had be framed in those terms and. my understanding is that he was very active in in not just in his teaching of linguistics and developing, even as he was developing his radical work and syntax and grammar, he was giving teachings on the escalation of the war in vietnam and and that produced a book in 1969 of essays that are previously published, essays called american power in the new mandarin. and that was the book that kind of put him, i think in catapult him in the role, a kind of well-known and respected. he hadn't yet been cast out of polite society because, you know, he was still being published by the new york review of books and it a critique of cold war liberalism. it was a critique of the liberal the cold university, the cold war establishment, way that the range of choices are narrow,

that anybody who is outside of that that that range cast is turned into what he called a wild man in the wings and dismiss it and not talked about and. and as time went on in many ways noam was very consistent he was he he continued to hold the united states to a standard. yes, he did critique the soviet union and he critique other regimes when he when needed or when he was asked to sign a petition but he did have an understanding of the hierarchy of and then that and that determined responsibility and obligation and hence his relentless focus the united states, i think you know, the 1960s as vietnam kind of gave way to, you know a myriad of covert operations everywhere in the middle east and east timor in in latin america. chomsky continued to follow is he he became the preeminent anti-imperialist of this country. and i think one of the one of his appeals is that he never he

resisted turn he resisted a kind, you know, introspective turn that a lot of academics made where. they started looking at the you know, the my the capillaries of power and you know, and and the relations individuals. he kept his eyes focused on them on the big picture. and i think that accounted his ongoing appeal as as time went on and almost as a profit you know the things that that his things kept getting worse. i mean the intervention when he said this intervention will lead to a greater catastrophe it inevitably did he became involved in america. he was he was he was very much interested. you know, mostly was vietnam and then the middle east, his very first essay that he published as a student was was a was a critique of the zionist project. he said that -- thrive in a partitioned land and and and and

i think that was a position that he held throughout life and and and so he was focused on the middle east. but but he paid quite a bit of attention on the area that i work on in latin america. and his work, especially the kind of cold the kind he wrote on the overthrow agenda and all of the stuff the 1970s. he breaks is part of his is world is focused, spread out from the the liberal estaba sherman and the corporate university to his concepts such as grand areas to which the united states administers its power his ideology critique which we're going to hear about. i think in a minute. and and by the time reagan came to power, he was well-positioned to understand, think what that meant. and he was one of the first people, i think to call it a second cold war, a new cold war.

and what was so important for people who worked on central america in the 1980s as as the united ramped up its in in el salvador, in nicaragua and in guatemala was a book that he wrote, turning the tide, which which kind of allowed activists to see all of the different conflict as as part of a single whole as part of a new cold war, single a second cold war. and and that was very influential. and then and then he then he then he traveled to nicaragua, i think, in 1986, and he gave a series lectures. he gave a series of lectures on linguistics in the afternoon and and politics in the evening, if i'm correct, it's full of managua lectures and. and they were enormously influential by this point, a group of anthropologists and and linguists in a round the great and mit area had become involved in solidarity movements in

central america, and they linked up with nicaragua and social scientists and. they they basically created helped create and helped nurture, you know, during the sandinista stays and the under state of war, under siege in the united states spending, millions and millions of dollars to break dissent. and he is a very vibrant, anthropoid community within nicaragua that. that, in turn helped the center to broker its relationship with its with the atlantico coast, which is culturally and linguist actually distinct. i was in and i think chomsky in some ways was the center of that a lot of a lot people gravitated around him. so, you know he wasn't just an activist and he wasn't just a scholar, but he he he inspired inspired other people to do to do that. to do you know work that that that had long lasting

consequences. you and me have both touch there on something that that i've found very important since i was first exposed to him in high school, which is the kind of moral clarity of of his work. there's so much information, so many issues that we were all deluged with at all times. and one of the refreshing things kind of intellectually refreshing things is the when you read chomsky is everything seems very grounded in a clear set of moral priorities, as if he's asked the questions, okay, what really matters what and what really matters is, you know, human suffering is abuse is oppression and what should we pay attention to? and and what's a noise he filters out the noise very, very quickly. he's very dismissive of a lot of things when questions asked of him that he thinks a frivolous he waves them and says, well, you need to pay attention to particularly the threats in our time. one of the things that's heavily emphasis in the book, because he's talked about it a lot in recent years, is the threats

facing the world, the book is called you know, subtitle is how u.s. foreign policy endangers the world the climate crisis and nuclear war, in particular. and victor, can i turn to you? can i ask you, you know, we haven't we've touched on many aspects of as a journalist work and we still haven't gotten to the media analysis for which he is is quite famous. so if you could maybe introduce this, the famous idea of manufacturing consent to us a bit about chomsky's kind of media analysis. sure, sure. i'm sure everyone in here is very heard of manufacturing consent. yes we've all read it at some point, or at least flip through it a bit as. i did on the train ride here from philly today. so consent, i think it's fair to say and of course, this is a book co-written with ed herman, who was a professor at the wharton school university of pennsylvania. i think the two of them were grappling with one big question, which is how in societies such

as ours, are people coerced are people convinced to take on positions often unpopular are positions that stem directly elite interests. and in trying to address this question and of course at least in theory in liberal supposedly democratic societies where you don't have official censorship, unlike under authoritarian regimes where you have direct state repression and in societies such as ours, supposed to have freedom of expression, supposed to have diversity of opinions the marketplace of ideas, but is it that so often we do fall in line? and i think this is obviously the media in propaganda come in to play and ed and noam tried to of course they deliberately took this phrase manufacturing consent from the films liberal journalist walter lippmann whom nathan and no mention in the book. and by the way i put a quick plug for the book it is it is a

page. i got an advance copy five days ago. i i'm almost finished with it. so i highly recommend reading it. but you guys this about this influence that walter lippmann had on elite opinion that essentially advanced democracies require propaganda that's it's important necessary to lead quote bewildered herd all of us towards the correct positions. and so in trying to make sense of how media are used as instruments of propaganda, they came up with the propaganda model which was composed of five filters, and it's through these filters that media has produced. the power operates through through media that you end up with very predictable patterns of omission, selection in emphasis. and the five filter, some of them are fairly intuitive, and i'm sure we all remember them from reading consent. but the first one is ownership.

so is the corporate. in private ownership of our media. of course, in many sectors we're talking about a handful of corporations dominating, our news media, but also importantly, it is the profit driven nature of our media system. so the commercial nature of our media system is very important here. the second filter is advertising scene, which works as a de facto licensing authority for determining kind of media. what sort of voices and views are actually expressed in our media system. and i think these first two filters really determine lot of what gets covered in our media. the third filter is around. so this overreliance on official sources, business elites, political oftentimes when leading politician, one leading republic politician, and that's basically your news story right there. the fourth filter is flak. and so this is organized or or organized pressure.

right wing media activist groups at the time that they wrote this book in 1988 it would be groups like accuracy in media, for example. i mean, i think we could still see many examples of this today. and then the fifth filter would be the ideology. in 1988, this was anti-communism then they later adapted this to anti-terrorism. now, i think it's most useful to see this filter as just the official narrative. who are the bad guys? who are the good guys? who are our official enemies? and i think that sort of overarching also our feelings towards, capitalism or the two party system, just things that we never scrutinize. i think that would be the fifth filter. and again, so taken together these propaganda model, these five filters really determine the way a lot of a lot of important issues get covered in our media. so let me ask you then, how would who has internalized chomsky or chomsky in harman's

about the media read the newspaper or watch the news? what kind of what kind of i do you do you develop there are so many examples of where their model be very useful and i should as a side note, it's quite tragic in my own field of communication, their work is often not used as as centrally as i think it should be, but of course, the example that comes to everyone's mind is what's happening in gaza today. and the message that that herman and chomsky would use in writing the manufacturing consent, they would these very systematic content analyzes and they would find two similar events or two similar controversies, ideally one dealing with one of our official allies when dealing with one of our official enemies, and then just compare the way they get covered, bring to light these ideological biases. so today, for example, might look to see how palestine organs are being described versus how israeli victims are being, or

ukrainian victims are being described. and it just so happens on again, the train right today, there's a i read this new study that was just published in the nation by adam johnson in in othman ali that actually do this they look msnbc and cnn to see how they're covering victims of of military violence in these countries and not they find things example the word genocide used much more often in describing what's happening in the ukraine compared to what's happening in gaza. so just these very i mean, very based just looking at counting words, looking at how these these these catastrophes are being described in our mainstream media that just really brings to light these biases. amy, can i can i bring you back in? back because obviously you have now run an independent news program for many decades where

you have tried, correct. for this kind of bias and i the you know, the intro to your book is called the going where the silence is. where do you think the silence is? and how do try and fill it? well, following up on what you're saying, when you look at the coverage of gaza and the west bank of lebanon. how often, and i'm not talking about fox, i'm talking about cnn and i'm talking about msnbc when was the last time you saw a palestinian interviewed who is, you know, at the target end? sadly, u.s. policy because the u.s. is providing the to israel. i mean, you rarely ever see someone interviewed. i can't think of a time i recently saw i can't say never because i don't watch it all the time but it is my job to see how

the media constructs this story it's our job to then deconstruct that if there a problem with it. yes it's our job in the media to go where the silence is and. it is often not silent. it is raucous, are speaking. they are organ, but it just doesn't hit the corporate media radar. mm hmm. yeah, i notice that a lot of the guests that i see on democracy now, i don't see anywhere other than democracy now and a lot of the quotes that i read in chomsky's books, i don't read anywhere else. there's sort of again, you say they speak loudly, but they're not they're not heard. it's it's remarkable. i want to get to a questions, because we want to conclude as i'm 45, but perhaps we could just conclude each with a quick couple of remarks on what you think our takeaway or what you think people ought to take away. chomsky i mean, maybe you could

go first and we could just pass. i'd like to hear what ben says first. oh, yeah, let's. i wasn't quite ready. so what do you think the takeaway. well, my my role in norm's life was very different. i mean, i'm hearing all of this. i and i lived it with him and i watched it happen a lot of it since 1993. not all of it. but i would say one thing that noam needed, with all of this, you can imagine him working this day and night was humor. so i think my job became because i decided it should be to bring humor to his life we had a dog that with me my dog came to work he called he called the cat. she she she did crawl into his during an important interview on israel and palestine and claw at his big metal trash can and when he came out he said bev and i said, i'm going to be fired. and he said i said what said is there any coffee?

i said, wait a minute, aren't you going to fire for my dog being? he said, no, we need the comic relief. so there were a lot of times, you know, he would look at the day's schedule and would say, bev because, my name was never bev was bev oh yeah, can we count our thoughts you know, and i'd say, oh, i'd give him some lame. and i didn't answer that question actually until after we traveled with him and he did a talk on language mind in italy. and i said no, we can't count our thoughts because nobody knows with thought is nobody knows what the mind is. and he actually raises his hand to that. so i think i think as far as the thinking he was always thinking he never stops thinking. even when he was thinking about thinking was thinking. and one day i said to him, how do you deal with the people who come, who write to you and write these nasty things because not everybody loved noam, you know, they were wrong, but not everybody loved him.

and he'd say to me things and everything was a puzzle with him. we had great fun. i mean, really liked that i could provide that for him, but he'd say people are hurricane means. i'd say, god, what does that mean? and he'd say, people, hurricanes. and then i'd leave his office and think about it, and then i'd come and trick him into answering it for me. and he'd say, you can't control a hurricane, you can't control people. you just have to wait it out. so, i mean, there were i have a million, you know we joked about his jewish and my catholic mother in which one instilled the most guilt. and i told him the fact that my mother would make me stick my tongue out. and if there was a black mark that meant i was lying so no one would say to me, could you write to these people and you can check my tongue when i come in? so and people should really pick up if you haven't if you haven't read bev's book, it is a delight if you want to know the and i think one of the things that you bring across in the book is the warmth of the real noam chomsky

does not always if people have just heard has talks on on the current crisis in the middle east or have read his his books don't they don't quite get that. yeah i saw protection he protected people might have spoken the truth and that was all he was about but he was also very careful. he thought everybody should be listened to. one of the last things i asked him in book was, why did you do it? why you answer every single email that came to you? i can't tell you what i said because at the of the book i figured out you'll find out. but let's just say he has a lot of yeah there's the why and then there's the howl which i'm still mystified by how he answers. and one last thing i want to say to what amy said about the piles of books and how he said, there's no place to put them. he put them on top of his desk in front of the window that frank had specifically designed him to look out at the boston skyline. so you looked at the boston skyline. all you saw were books. so, victor, any any concluding

thoughts on our take on the takeaway that you have from chomsky's body of work? sure. and i'll pick up on a couple of these themes, because i do really think that generosity, his generosity so pervasive in everything that he did in not just emailing not just replying to all the emails, but also endorsing everyone's and actually reading the books like that's the part that surprised me the most when he was blurb in my my books. but i do think this picks up on something amy said earlier that. it's is somewhat counterintuitive that he was actually so optimize stick and i had the opportunity to noam about three years ago for the nation magazine thing and that was something his you know he's talking about worthy and unworthy victims and all these very topics that he read the in the paper that morning he woke up every morning and that was the first thing that he would do is read the meet the elite media already start generating a media critique that for that day but he also after all these years

seen such progress and that's that really that really jumped out at this idea that he had actually seen progress he attributed it to social forces from below that social movements had force had shifted these media narratives think that's really important to hold on to. i'm i guess i mean as a model to aspire i think certainly his humility his generous his insistence on the on the decency of human beings on everybody and on the quality of what of everybody. i think that was the foundation of, his his ethics that everybody is equally worthy of and of dignity, of a dignified and and looking at the power systems that prevent that from from from from becoming to fruition. i think, you know, his skepticism his raised eyebrow when it comes to power, when it comes to detecting --, you know,

if you watch some of you youtube and you watch his, you know, debates with william buckley, you know, you could i mean, like respect is being respectful and he's the questions but you can tell what he thinks buckley is is like his you know, he thinks buckley is a clown. i mean, you know, and and yet he and yet he treats them decently and. he answers questions. but he has a he has a sharp antenna for for doublespeak and for and for double standards. and and i guess the only other thing i'd say he always inevitably denies that there's a relationship between his linguistic structures and and and scholarship and his ethics, his politics. and i guess if he says it, he says that's true i guess that's true. but i oh, and i don't know that much about linguistics. but my understanding is that one of the one one of the the basic principles of chomsky in linguist linguistics is the idea

that there's infinite amount of data out there and we as finite beings. right can't have access to all of that information. and yet we're able to create these moral systems from and it's almost as almost a you military to that to that to that weight that framework right that we as as finite beings that that that that are infinitely creative can have access to the to the to the of of data and universe and amount of data that exists in the universe. and yet we're still able to to create moral meaning from it. and i think that ultimately is the essence of his polity. x to he he he he he seemed very humble to me, you know, and what he insisted was the obvious, you know, the obvious double standards, the obvious double speaks, the, you know,

justification for power and barbarism and pointing it out and pointing out in a relentless kind of i and in some ways i think of him as walter benjamin's angel of history. you know, he keeps his i you know, you just sees the catastrophes piling up and and the and and yet he just keeps it keeps going like, you know noam was almost never quoted on the front page of the new york, although i think in maybe it was in the book review, they talked about him as great and one of the great intellectuals of our time to which he responded, did i say wrong? but, you know, i think he taught us, especially in the united, what an awesome responsibility we have as people who come from the most powerful country on earth. that gives us a kind of protection. and we have to use that

protection because we have to expose what the united states is doing in other parts of the world. and he never shied away from that he is a man of great compassion. i mean, the way he took care of his first wife, carol, who died of brain cancer. and i'm sure bev could talk about that to the end tending to her was so deeply viewed to full and humbling and his great sense of egalitarian as everyone described as answering all his emails, being tireless in really ultimately his optimism that. people can make a difference. they keep at it. yeah, they i every time i don't answer an email. i think to myself, you know, noam chomsky would be answering all of his emails. i think a lot about the model.

we've, we've talked a lot tonight about professor chomsky, about his with life. you know, why we've been personally inspired by him in the way touched other people but he wasn't very self he has been, you know, a very self-deprecating person and someone who constantly is uncomfortable with being celebrated as we have. and i think we would always want us to draw attention to the the the issues that he writes, the very, very serious problems facing humankind and our obligation as as people, as you said, amy, you know, as people with privilege, people who live in this country, our obligations, our duties and i think, you know, we can we can read i think we can and should, you know, read his work, internalize facts that he documented that nobody documented and, you know, not take away a just a uncritical celebration in of the of the of the great noam chomsky. but, you know, a model of of how

each of us can be engaged with the most important struggles our time. so thank you so much to our wonderful panel. we're going to have a little time for questions. thank you. we've got. just a few minutes for our questions. anybody has questions questions. this isn't a question. it's a it's a further remark. i was married to a of gnomes named louis carve my my name is ellen kentaro and so i do know him from gosh 1964 on and i deeply agree with what everybody has said. uh, his warmth, his compassion, his generosity, his kindness is what hasn't been said and what might seem obvious. louis said to me early on in our

he said, i have only ever met one genius. and that is chomsky. and then he said i've watched him read a book and he goes. he read 60 pages in a minute and, remembers everything and remembers where it was in which paragraph on which page, which means that i, i don't think i mean his, his moral stance, moral perspective is a model for us. but he can't be a model for us because we we don't have his we don't have that kind of brain. you know, he me. yeah. i've read peace in the middle east, went to israel and kept going there and reporting on the west bank and israel's

occupation of it from 1979. and i'm still writing about so he changed my life i'm just one of millions and millions. i can't birth subscriber we love a current affairs subscriber do you think that his influence is greater outside united states? they feel like he's not really spoken about it might just be to the media component, but i feel like he's more revered and up as an influence elsewhere in the world than the country. do you agree that or is my off base wants to take that? i feel like i would just say yes i. i would think that we would. i think michael c-span is building so we that i would think we we'd need younger people on the panel to answer the question.

i don't i don't know i don't know. i know. i i remember during the anti-global protests before 911 that we if we in seattle and other people people holding signs read. chomsky so it was a great influence on that movement. and i think that we would need. you know, i just add a little bit. i can tell you that i planned his days in the office and they planned his interviews and his phone calls and. i can say that probably three quarters of the people who wanted to interview him were from other countries outside the us plenty in the u.s. i mean he saw thousands of people but mostly outside the u.s.. hi, i'm jesse chandler. i just wanted to say thank you and also one of the things that hasn't been talked about yet, hasn't been touched down, we've

talked about like the, you know, media elite and just, you know, dealing with the elite in politics. but there's this new trend in recent years of vilifying academic elite. and i wondering if you could talk about chomsky's opinion on that and your own opinions on that as well, since i think that's a really important issue in dealing with how people absorb chomsky's teachings and all of the information that we're trying to disseminate. it's a very interesting question because in some ways chomsky himself is very critical. the academic elite. and, you know, the first major essay, the responsibility intellectuals, is in many ways an indictment of the academic elite for the for the right reasons. and he had great respect for serious scholarship. i don't know. greg, do you have your your within academy? maybe you could.

amy wants to say goodbye to say goodbye if you to washington. we're going to do the show from there but i also wanted to encourage people to just go to democracynow.org and just see the interviews with noam from 1996 to today, and also i wanted to congratulate you, nathan, on your superb book and how exciting is that? it is out right now. do you know how many interviews you did total with i? don't know. i'm going to have to check on the train down to washington. i'm going to check how many your exactly? really, it's a little. i it is a very rough number. thanks so much for joining us by amy. i mean, i don't really have anything profound to say to that that it does index. i think the evolution u.s. politics when chomsky began writing political theory and political work in the 1960s, his his focus on the cold war

university as a site of power production. right. the american mandarin what's what's the name of the book i cited earlier the american power the and the and the new mandarins. right. with the ways in which academic elites were part of the production of cold war power. and obviously we've a long way we're at scholars and universities are under siege by insurgent new right that wants do away with the universities altogether not do away with them then at least turn them. i don't know what they want to turn into so that it does kind of it is it is a it does kind of index that evolution and of u.s. politics and the rise of right that that came after that first phase of chomsky's writing as i see a question of can add just one bit to that that sort of

picks up on both the question also what you were saying, nathan, which is because no one was clearly very critical of the academy as an institution. and one of my questions for him when i interviewed him was about this idea in the popular imagination that, campuses are overrun with, left wing radicals. and we were about talking about how in actuality these are fairly liberal institutions, liberal in the international sense of being fairly centrist in, you know, maybe aligned with the democratic party, but not even really social democratic. so it's there's an interesting disconnect about we it's almost we only wish it were as radical as as we are often made out to be, but not take away from the very real threat of we are under a more and more attack from from far right wing forces. i've heard here tonight. and often would spoken of about chomsky his great consistency over time and i mean he's lived

a long life as a public intellectual if you equal him i think he's shockingly the same age as habermas. but i'm curious for anyone to answer what what change? how do you see? like what would you identify as something that really moved thinking or something. he really moved on over time that that strikes you. i mean i'll just say that said he if you asked him that question would say nothing like when i write, you know, i said, you know i said i said you know, the cuban revolution influenced a lot of new left thinkers, you know, i mean, everybody, sartre, william appleman, you know, see wright mills, they all were at little books about the cuban revolution because they thought that, you know we'd overcame some problem. you know, one or the other. i said, you, we were you, you know, were you moved by the cuban revolution? is it not really. and then he went back and he went back to the thirties, said, you know, i so he there was a

remarkably good and stubbornness you know, he was you know, he was he very analytical. he was very he was very wedded to. you know, he's very critical of of not just postmodernism. but but any of metaphysical marxism. he constantly criticized the concept of the dialectic know he said it either means something very or nothing at all. you know you know, like and he would say these over and over and you'd find these quotations over the course of his thing. so, i mean, i'm sure, i'm sure he he evolved over time and was attuned the fact that it wasn't the technocrats or liberal elite that was setting the agenda anymore, but an insurgent and scary right and i think his willingness to to constantly urge people to vote for the democratic party. you know because of a greater danger might have been a change in his political strategy and

thinking at a time yeah i, i believe that real fast. i wanted to say that every june, when noam packed up and he touched so many lives and so many people worked with him, he would and say, i don't think anything i did this year made a difference and i would just look at him and shake my head and i'd have to sort of lift him up and carol would do the same thing. you know, you are making a difference. you teaching a lot of people how to do this work and you're speaking the truth. and one thing that i really think important to say is that when started you mentioned my blog earlier, and that's the reason i wrote the book. when activists read my they said, wait a minute. noam chomsky has a life. noam chomsky has, a boat. he has grandchildren that plays with. and you know, alex, there are lots of activists who have committed suicide, very depressed people, because they're looking at this stuff,

24 seven and when they found out he actually tried to have a life a real life of out of all away from all of this, he had to balance himself. then other activists would say, then i guess it's okay for me to spend a sunday. my family and i think that was important. yeah, it's a pretty quick reaction just going back to something that i said earlier, but i really do think. he recognized that media had changed both in good, troubling ways. the good part, again was this idea that he the example he gave was even the the, you know, the impulse perfect 1619 project, the new york times and just the coverage of race in various issues that 20, 30, 40 years ago would have been beyond that. they would cover these issues in these particular ways. but on the other hand, he was very disappointed or troubled by the collapse of newspaper

industry and how, you know, we've lost. two thirds of our newspaper journalists since the early 2000s. and he thought that's a very you know, a very a very problem issue for us if we want to try to democratize the media in any any significant way. um, um, hi. i'm not sure if this is a question i would love to hear your like some of those things about the attacks on academia are by far right and all of that want to say that's like a lot of the problem in academia is actually it's kind of political economy that um, it has, it is working now like corporation and so a lot of people who want to um my -- asserted noam chomsky but like be this certain skepticism voices in humanities they are kind of like push that bit by bit starting graduate

school so when i was in graduate school i saw that's like how bit by bit students are getting kicked if they are not falling in line and then when they become a professor i saw that's like how junior scholars are kicked out and how a lot of us actually that precariously employed and like i visited noam chomsky his article five in cambridge and i saw that's like this is a person that is obviously like reading everything and has has time and security to do all of these things i'm not sure how many academics that opportunity these days the income is are like really low and most phds don't even get a job and so it's important i think that's like to also understand that's it's easy to attack for right and all of that it's more difficult to

understand that's like how our whole universities system is actually um not, having a public intellectual, um, like noam chomsky anyway. yeah yeah, i think that's a really important point is i'm, i'm also someone who is a, you know, went to graduate school and then realized that actually being a professor would not allow for the level of freedom to do the kind of work that i thought was valuable, which why now run a magazine? i don't think he would disagree with. any of the points you've made about what is sometimes called the neo liberalization of the of the university. you know very very important draw attention to the conditions under which knowledge can or is not produced can be or is not prove. um, yeah. yeah. one more one more question. yeah. hi, i, i've been watching a lot of interviews and lectures that noam has given on youtube. i mean that literally thousands

of them. yeah. and the thing that, that comes out the most that he talks about is things have happened in nicaragua you know our military in nicaragua in guatemala and how farm corporations went into haiti and started rice through you know farmers off their land and he he makes mention of the fact that this is never picked up by newspapers you know even to the point of the number of people that died and in tamir in east timor never mentioned does anyone know how he gets all information is does he actually go to these places better. i think that's a question for you. he he hears from people in these countries gets to know them. he he hears from people all over the world all the time every day. and he reads about i'd say 24,

30 journals and newspapers every day. but mostly he gets the information firsthand from people. um, he has lots and lots, lots of connections. as i said, there are about thousand emails a week and phone calls and the rest well so that concludes our event. i just want to say thank you all for coming. i want to say a special to sonia savchenko, our director at current affairs. she organized so much. she's the reason this event took place. she put in a lot of hard work putting this together. so thank, estonia, i hope you all check out the book. i mean, we've been talking about lots of things that we think are, you know, chomsky's major contributions and. as i say, as i mentioned at the outset, you know, my hope in working him on this was to try and help collect some of core insights to organize, to update them for 2024, to make them

fresh and and relevant and to really kind of state restate powerfully and you'll if if we managed to pull that off but i hope you all will give it a chance so i'd say books for sale outside plasma books has has all of our all of our books on sale and they're all great because we've assembled a fantastic panel of people. so thank you all so much for coming. and. subscribe to current affairs magazine. you can go online, there is a code the word chomsky will get you 20% off please subscribe