{"id":5966,"date":"2014-03-21T21:26:19","date_gmt":"2014-03-22T02:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/?p=5966"},"modified":"2014-03-24T15:32:41","modified_gmt":"2014-03-24T20:32:41","slug":"chomsky-virtual-lecture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/archives\/5966","title":{"rendered":"Chomsky Virtual Lecture"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"noam\"By Hannah Hecht–<\/strong>Noam Chomsky, world-famous linguist, U.S. foreign policy critic, and author of over 100 books, Skyped in to give a question and answer session in Morningside\u2019s very own Yockey room earlier this week. He answered questions from Morningside students, faculty, and alumni in an interactive virtual setting.<\/p>\n

Most of the Morningsiders\u2019 questions regarded Chomsky\u2019s opinions on U.S. foreign policy. The first question of the session, posed by faculty member Patrick Blaine, asked him for his perspective on the U.S.\u2019s reaction to Crimea\u2019s recent decision to secede from the Ukraine and become an independent state, with the goal of eventually being annexed to Russia.<\/p>\n

Chomsky said that while the actions of the Russian government to persuade Crimea to secede were in violation of international law, the protestations of the U.S. government are actually hypocritical. According to Chomsky, the U.S. disregards the same international laws that prevent foreign armies from marching across international borders all the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s remarkable that denunciations by U.S. officials and commentators pass without critical evaluation,\u201d Chomsky said.<\/p>\n

He compared Russia\u2019s involvement in Crimea to the U.S.\u2019s involvement in Cuba at Guantanamo Bay. Except, according to Chomsky, Russia\u2019s involvement in Crimea has a much stronger case.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the U.S. had, say, Russia or China marching up into our country through Mexico, we wouldn\u2019t be too happy about it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

And, for Chomsky, Russia\u2019s vulnerability at the Ukrainian border is the reason why Russia is pushing for Crimea\u2019s reunification with Russia.<\/p>\n

Another question, posed by student David Riveros Garcia, asked Chomsky whether citizens of a country should feel an obligation to have a certain level of civic literacy. Chomsky answered that each person\u2019s degree of responsibility to civic knowledge and engagement should be decided by his or her degree of privilege and opportunity.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you work 50 hours a week just to feed your family, you aren\u2019t very privileged, so you have no opportunity to become civically engaged,\u201d he said. \u201cHowever, if you are, say a university professor or a university student, you have a lot of privilege, so you should use that privilege and opportunity to gain an understanding and try to help people who lack in privilege. I mean, that\u2019s just elementary morality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another student asked Chomsky about the media and the material it hides from American citizens. Chomsky explained that there are tons of examples of things that every citizen should know about that end up getting pushed to the back pages of the newspapers, or don\u2019t get reported at all. He used the last financial crisis as an example. According to him, when AIG collapsed and was about to bring down the entire U.S. economy with it, the government bailed it out to save the economy. However, he said, the very next year the executives were given huge bonuses. Leading U.S. economists justified these bonuses by saying that the bonuses were a part of the negotiated contract. However, according to Chomsky, the government doesn\u2019t honor all of the contracts it makes. Recently, Illinois passed a law that said that the state wasn\u2019t going to pay the pensions of its public service workers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy is it that we don\u2019t have to hold up our contract with the Illinois public service workers, but the AIG executives have to be paid huge bonuses because of their contract with the government?\u201d Chomsky asked.<\/p>\n

The virtual meeting had been originally scheduled as a lecture over \u201cThe Power of Words.\u201d Chomsky, world-renowned as the modern father of linguistics, is one of the world\u2019s foremost authorities on subject.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish he would have lectured, rather than turn it into a full-on Q and A,\u201d said sophomore history major Nick Misukanis, \u201cIt would have been cool to hear about linguistics from Chomsky himself.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, despite the change in format, students, staff, and faculty alike regarded the question-answer session as a success. Misukanis thought that Chomsky\u2019s words offered an eye-opening experience for all of the students in attendance.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was fantastic that we got to hear a world intellectual\u2019s call-to-arms for students and young people to spread knowledge and keep themselves from being completely blinded by the media,\u201d Misukanis said.<\/p>\n

The event was a part of the Hickman-Johnson-Furrow Learning Center Virtual Lecture Series. The final installment of this year will feature Peter Suber, a philosopher specializing in the philosophy of law and open access to knowledge. The lecture\u2019s topic will be \u201cWhat is Open Access?\u201d and it will take place on April 14 at 7 p.m. The campus location has yet to be determined.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Hannah Hecht–Noam Chomsky, world-famous linguist, U.S. foreign policy critic, and author of over 100 books, Skyped in to give a question and answer session in Morningside\u2019s very own Yockey room earlier this week. He answered questions from Morningside students, faculty, and alumni in an interactive virtual setting. Most of the Morningsiders\u2019 questions regarded Chomsky\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":5967,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[203],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5966"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5979,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5966\/revisions\/5979"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}