The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss - Current Events: Noam Chomsky on Censorship & More

Episode Date: June 16, 2021

Listen to our newest mini-series "Current Events with Noam Chomsky"! In this episode, Lawrence and Noam discuss a variety of issues around Censorship. Show your support and access exclusive bonus content at https://www.patreon.com/originspodcast   Noam Chomsky is sometimes referred to as “the father of modern linguistics”, is a political activist, cognitive scientist, linguist, and philosopher who currently holds joint appointments at MIT and UofA. He is the author of over 100 books and generally considered one of the greatest living public intellectuals as well as being one of the most cited scholars in history. His most recent book, Yugoslavia: Peace, War, and Dissolution, is a collection of his previously published essays on that country. In the book, Chomsky reflects on the way international politics has affected Yugoslavia over the past 25 years and what it means for the global socio-economic landscape. Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to the Origins Podcast and the Origins Project Foundation. I'm your host here, Lawrence Krause. And I want to introduce what may be a new continuing series, which is really, goes back to one of our first guests and one of our most popular podcasts with none other than Noam Chomsky. I asked Noam if we could periodically update our discussion by talking about current events. So here you go, current events with Noam Chomsky. My idea of society that works is you have education, open questioning, open discussion, and decide together how to do things to benefit everyone. You can't have open discussion with censorship.

Now, I've known from my days as a student in one of your classes that, yes, there's effective, there's effective subtle censorship and there has been for a long time. You know, you couldn't, you didn't appear in the New York Times for a long time. I mean, so there are ways of censoring out ideas, you know, like, but of concern to me is the overt censorship that's now happening in this country, mostly driven by the left. It was overt before, but nobody paid attention. I could give you plenty of cases from my own experience.

Yeah, yeah, I guess so. Books destroyed, all sorts of things. Since it was directed against the left, nobody cared. Now it's picked up by sectors of the left. It's wrong in principle. It's tactically idiotic. It's a gift to the far right, and it's wrong in principle. And it's harming.

It's harming discussion. It is not only harming discussion. It's stifling it because of fear in the places where, in the one place that you and I know best, which is academia, you know everything, but I know best is academia. I wrote a piece, known on which I

because I was concerned about what I called the ideological corruption of science which is basically where people can't talk about and can't ask questions and if they do then they're politically incorrect they get removed. I had I got letters from faculty around the country not a huge number

but a number is sort of agreeing and saying gee I wish I could talk about it. That's acceptable. But I got five different letter emails from faculty who wrote me under pseudonyms because they were so afraid that if the university found out that they agreed with what I was saying

that they would be removed that's where does that sound like does that sound like U.S.? I mean, I just, it's terrifying. I could amplify that. Okay. When I come out with statements like that, I get a lot of letters from people

who are afraid to identify themselves describing things that happened in their own college where they have to walk on eggshells. They're afraid of saying this super sensitive. did I use the wrong pronoun here? Did I say something I wasn't allowed to say?

It's wrong in principle and suicidal. It's not going to help anybody. Well, I'm worried it's not, I mean, in a selfish, look, in an objective way, it's not helping anyone, but I'm worried in a somewhat selfish way, I guess, in the sense that the progress, the United States has been aided by many things, But more or less, one of the things that I do believe that has been incredibly important in the United States is that for one reason or another, it was able to bring the best young people from around the world to its educational systems, many of whom, some of whom went back to their own countries, but many of whom came here and produced the wealth and quality of life and many other things that we have as a nation here. that depends on on on on on on on on promoting the best on open inquiry and and and and and in and in my opinion in a meritocracy in universities i am worried that this that this stifling of scholarship

maybe it won't hurt the world but it's going to it's going to it's going to it ultimately it the effect will be down the road of of of removing the United States. States as a sort of the leader of in research in all areas of science and other areas of academic study. What do you think? I think that's true, but that's not the part that bothers me the most. Some other countries, the leader in science. Yeah, so it'll be all right. It'll be done somewhere else. I agree with you there. I think it does do that. And we can see it right now. Take MIT where I spent most of my life. You walk down the holes, you think you're in Asia. Students are Chinese, South

Koreans. Yeah. We block them. Yeah, of course. You stop science. Yeah, well, that's for sure. That's what the right wing wants to do. Okay. And stopping science means stopping the economy. That's where the high-tech economy comes from as well. You want it to be developed in China?

Okay. Keep them out. But more than that, though, when you point out that Europe is more racist than us, as I say, we accept that the United States history is in many ways based in racism. but to argue that the National Institutes of Health is racist, which is what the line that Francis Collins buys into because of this systemic racist mythology, I would say. To argue that is to accept a reality which doesn't exist and then once you do that, as I've talked to you about before, we've talked about religion.

My problem with religion isn't what people believe. It's what they, is their actions. When they believe myths, their actions tend to be, to be harmful. Like if you stop stem cell research, you're just killing people. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Stopping stem cell research is killing people. But, but arguing that you have to, that an institution with not, I mean, I guess I'd like to think of evidence, and so do you. Let's look at evidence-based situations.

And you've been an academic longer than me, and maybe I'm diluted. But it seems to me that universities are on the whole the least racist, least sexist places, potentially in the country. Not only that, but the ones that are the most free and democratic. It have been. Has been. Well, I think it's still largely true. Even you take a well-functioning faculty department, it's about a. as close to workers' control as you get anyway.

If it's well-functioning, yeah. But the trouble is that, as you and I know, most academics exist on the crumbs that are handed out by an administration. And when the administration is willing to fire people, I'll give you an example. I was just reading about this professor in Berea College in Kentucky, who was a psychologist and apparently a well-known, reasonably well-established psychologist.

He wanted to do a survey, you know, a survey, which means he had to go to the human, you know, you have to get permission, you know, when you're doing anything related to people. He went through all those hoops. It was a survey on hostile work environments.

And it was a detailed survey of students and faculty, and they produced the results, statistics, used all the social science statistics. But in the survey, were examples, some of which had actually happened at the university. And apparently that infuriated enough people, students and otherwise, with some of the ridiculous examples of the hostile work environment, that there was an outcry and the university removed this tenure professor

and the requirement of tenure at the time. The only way you could remove a tenure professor besides flagrant, whatever, was incompetence. And the university used both of those things to remove someone. Those things concern me in terms of the academic freedom and democracy. They should be concerning us all the way back. How many Marxist economists are there in economics department? Yeah.

Okay. It's always been true. Now it's getting true for another sector of the population. Was wrong then? It's wrong now. Okay, I agree. Is there anything we can do? I mean, since the media and government and industry and university

leaderships are buying into that censorship issue and critical race theory, for example, wholeheartedly, is there anything, I mean, obviously you and I both agree. I think it's the old statement that if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, we're both educators. We both believe ultimately education is the only hope to counter these things. You shouldn't subject yourself to it. If you do what you think is right, if everybody screams at you, too bad. If you lose your job, it's unfortunate. Try to pick it up somewhere else.

It's hard. You should not subordinate yourself to this. I agree. It's just hard to get people to do that. You know very well. Yeah, yeah. And I do. And if you do it, yeah, it's really hard.

And that's always been true. But is there any way we can, but again, one would think that, you know, you, I think I again, learn from you that governments, and it's the same for academia and industry, they don't lead, they follow. And so if there's a public outcry at some level, they're going to flip on a coin, right? They're going to just do whatever is necessary. So is there a, is there, um, What's the most effective way to try and put pressure on the people who are, yeah.

The way to change. The first thing is to get people to change their minds. Yeah. If they do, you get public pressure, then you get response to it. There's really no other way. We don't have guns. We don't have force. We wouldn't want them if we had them.

The only force that we have is getting people to try to think things through for themselves. And I guess getting people who are brave enough to try and speak things, even when they're not politically correct, long enough to finally... Let's go back to classical Greece. Who drank the hemlock? I mean, it's a symbol. The guy who was corrupting the youth of Athens, Athens, by asking too many questions. We don't want that kind of thing. Yeah, we don't want that kind of thing. And I guess you saw on your struggles in Vietnam, ultimately, I guess, I guess, guess the hope, if we're going to end on a positive note, is that to me, that always gives me an example, that you speak out, you speak out politically incorrect, you deal with the, some people have to be willing to deal with the harsh response, the censorship that you experience, the,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, from, from, from, many, many forums, all of that. But ultimately, ultimately, people have to be willing to do that if change is going to happen. And if Vietnam was any example, it can happen, I guess. Not just Vietnam is an example, but everything else is too. Civil rights, women's rights, environment, pick what you like, abolitionism, you know, always against strong, often very violent repression, labor rights, name it. That's the way the world works. Okay. You know.