The Haury Conversation - Noam Chomsky Talks With Toni Massaro

[Music] good evening and welcome everyone my name is John Paul Jones on the Dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and it's a pleasure to welcome everyone to tonight's event the Howry conversation Noam Chomsky talks with Tony Massaro I am extremely grateful to the co-sponsors of tonight's event the AG nice nomes Howry program in environment and social justice our favorite local nonprofit art house theater the loft cinema and Tucson entrepreneur Don Martin [Music] [Applause] the Howry conversation celebrates the life and values of Agnes Nelms Howry a noted traveler author and editor and a woman with a means to make a dedicated philanthropic commitment to social justice human rights indigenous peoples environmental protection journalism the arts civil liberties international peace and economic development and scientific research especially archaeology and dendrochronology her generous bequest to the University of Arizona established a unique program that leverages the power of partnership between the University and our community to address local and regional manifestations of some of the world's most pressing challenges these include equitable access to life's basic needs like food and education and housing and health care as well as enhancing community resilience and dealing with water availability energy demand and climate change the Howry program supports projects designed to serve marginalized communities but its principles demand that these projects are also authentic and co-equal and we hope sustainable and scalable after a few short years since its founding the how a program can count on many successes and many more are in the works and I encourage you to visit Howry Arizona ddu to learn more about her and her ongoing legacy tonight's conversation will touch on topics that are dear to the Howry program's mission and throughout will have an opportunity to hear from and engage with one of the world's most influential activists but because of that I ask that whatever your opinions that you respect those of both our guests and your neighbors in the audience I will not however ask you to turn off your cell phones for the conversation after it's over we have allotted approximately 45 minutes for a question-and-answer session your chance to ask professor Chomsky whatever is on your mind well just about whatever is on your mind and to submit your questions just take your mobile device to WW slide oh that's SLI do calm and type in event code hashtag Chomsky 2017 and send us a question and now it is my distinct pleasure to introduce this evening's moderator Regents professor Tony Massaro she joined the faculty of UAE's James E Rogers College of Law in 1989 and she has held a Milton Oh repeat chair and constitutional law for the past 20 years from 1999 to 2009 she served as the Dean of the College of Law and was the first woman to hold that post [Applause] in 2006 she was named a Regents professor by the Arizona Board of Regents the Regents professorship is the most is the most prestigious faculty rank one can attain in the state of Arizona recipients are chosen by their peers for their exceptional achievements and scholarship and teaching among the works leading to her recognition were dozens of Law Review articles on constitutional law shame penalties and law and emotion as well as two books the Ark of due process in American constitutional law published by Oxford and Civil Procedure cases and problems which is now in its fifth edition and I should also mention that in addition to her scholarship she is an eighth time recipient of the teacher of Year award from the College of Law [Applause] now I asked professor Massaro to moderate tonight's event because of her tremendous intellect but she is also the perfect choice insofar as she serves as the chair of the Howry program Advisory Council a role in which she upholds the highest ideals of mrs. Howry so thank you Tony for all you've done for the Howry program and for agreeing to be part of tonight's event professor Massaro is joined tonight by one of the University of Arizona's most recent faculty appointments laureate professor of linguistics Noam Chomsky formerly of MIT the author of over 100 books and countless articles in his field professor Chomsky is widely recognized as the founder of modern linguistics his ideas have revolutionized that field of course but they have also indelibly shaped anthropology cognitive science childhood education computer science the teaching and study of languages mathematics psychology philosophy and speech this breadth of scholarship and innovation is why he is the world's most cited living academic [Applause] and I should add that his attraction to the University of Arizona is first and foremost foremost because of our outstanding Department of linguistics of [Applause] course there is also Noam Chomsky the public intellectual the self-described libertarian socialist critic of established politicians on both the left and the right an ardent free speech advocate Chomsky has published and lectured widely on capitalism the media the Middle East terrorism and war an activist who has influenced millions he is well known for his insightful critiques of US foreign policy from his outspoken stance against the Vietnam War in his first political book American power and the new mandarins to his most recent book requiem for the American dream those two works are mere bookends to 50 other volumes he has published on politics during his career a career that it's not over for as I understand it two more books are appearing this year for his global impact in support of social justice and the fight against environmental destruction the Howry programs donor-advised fund board was enthusiastic and bestowing upon Noam the title of agnese gnomes Harry chair which is supporting his presence at the U of A where he will be lecturing teaching and consulting with graduate and undergraduate students and for that support I am eternally grateful to the Howry trustees mary greer greg darien and tammy barnett please join me in giving a warm Tucson welcome to Regents professor Tony Massaro and you a laureate professor of linguistics and Agnes Nelms how a chair Noam Chomsky okay so I want to be sure you can hear me so kind welcome to Tucson welcome to the U of A he's been here before but never so completely one of us we're delighted that you and your wife are here so are two so I want to start for the audience to get to know you a little bit better before we get into some of the substantive themes and one would be if you were reflecting on your own life on who or what shaped you the most especially as it relates to the theme of social justice how would you answer that question begins pretty early I was growing up as a child in the 1930s during the Depression deep depression my earliest childhood memories are people coming to the door trying to sell rags something to try to survive I recall the writing in a trolley car with my mother passing a textile factory where women were on strike outside being brutally beaten by security forces most of the family was first-generation immigrants mostly unemployed workers with a high level of cultural engagement partly through the unions which are of course very centers of activism education recreation and so on partly just in the general they were in New York General New York vironment they were part of the high culture scene even though they were quite poor and unemployed but the objective circumstances were much harsher than they are today but rather strikingly my memory is that there was a sense of hopefulness that's missing today striking difference there was a sense somehow we're going to get out of this will work together they'll be a way out there was a sympathetic administration there were New Deal programs that didn't end the depression but they softened the edges and they gave a sense that there is a way forward the labor movement was mobilizing it was the source of energy activism hopefulness for the future all of that was positive at the same time I'm old enough to have listened to Hitler's speeches over the radio on the Nuremberg rallies not understanding the words but there was no mistaking the the mood of the of the crowd that was cheering and you could see that step by step Europe was succumbing to fascism Italy of course had already had was fascist well before I was born but Germany Austria Czechoslovakia in fact the first article I remember writing for school newspaper fourth grade newspaper I hope that it's disappeared and that nobody will ever find this but I remember the first couple of sentences it was and it's easy to date because it was the immediately after the fall of Barcelona in February 1939 and it started by talking about the fall of one country after another Spain the next Toledo of Barcelona looked inexorable so that was and we were Jewish we happen to live in a an area which was pretty harshly at his Medic it was mostly Irish from German in fact took me a while as I grew up to get over a visceral fear of Catholics yes again Irish kids down the street when they came out of the Jesuit school was raving Adi Semites later in the afternoon things calm down play ball and that's what I think that all of this was an amalgam of on the one hand deep depression but hoped for the future on the other hand the sense that the world is coming to a fascist cloud that there's going to be no end there was a dramatic period in many ways I'm interested in the fourth grader writing an essay on fascism I'm sure the audience is too and and I really am you know here's somebody whose whole career is devoted to thinking about sinking and language and I'm wondering if and and by the way that essay that he wrote in fourth grade became the subject of a more major paper later at NYU you discount your own genius but nobody else does and I'm wondering if you can say were you conscious of being a little different from the other fourth graders well actually that goes back to earlier my parents were teachers Hebrew teachers so very I think I was put in a nursery school at about 18 months old 20 months and I have memories of nursery school just kind of standing there and wondering what are all these kids doing you know they all seem to be doing something narced a bit but I was at UH I was at a an experimental dewy-eyed school run by Temple University had a very progressive education department at a very good school on Dewey grounds and there was no it was a mixture of students some of them from some of them students who couldn't make out and the behavioral problems in schools others whose parents were oriented towards higher education so a mix but there was no sense of ranking it was not like when my own kids went to school in the sixties by the time of third grade they were describing other kids as smart and dumb you know the smart kids were in one level class the thumb kids in another we had nothing like that there was there were no grades there were no of course there were tests but they were just for seeing how you're doing what you have to do better and so on actually I skipped a grade but nobody paid any attention the only thing that was noticed is I was a smallest kid in the class something else that you've talked about that I think is it's probably something that came naturally to you but you you have a definition of true science that I really admire which is you said true science is a willingness to be puzzled by simple things you think that can be taught I think that children have it it's not so much a matter of being taught as a matter of being driven out of your head I think it's natural with children you your own children or young children that you deal with or couldn't puzzled about everything in the world for strange things are happening and it takes a rigid system of indoctrination and control to beat that out of people's heads but the idea that but modern science says did really begin with a willingness to be puzzled about simple things so he'd go back to say the Galilean period the reigning you know scholastic doctrines had answers to all sorts of questions like suppose I suppose this has boiling water in it and I hold it like this and I let go as a couple fall and the steam will rise and there was an answer they're going to their natural place I see you what what am I saying there's a form that's going through the air and getting into my brain and that's how I see you so we answered that question and those were considered answers going back to classical Greece when Galileo and others decided to be puzzled about it and asked why is the glass falling and the steam rising how quickly are they falling that would have stone and a feather fall at the same rate and so on then you get the beginnings of modern science and it's the same in my own field back in the 1950s forties fifties there were but we're considered to be answers to the questions about the nature of language in fact as a student as an undergraduate in the 1940s the concern the students in linguistics felt this is a lot of fun but it's terminal we know the answers to everything is just a matter of applying the methods we were taught to all the languages in the world and then it's over turned out when you began to think about it you didn't understand anything everything was a puzzle a lot of it remains not only puzzles but deep mysteries and that ability to take a look at things that look obvious and say well why is it that way which children do have is I think actually the source of creative modern science and it certainly can be taught it's in fact there's a famous physicist at MIT Victor Weisskopf who was famous for having in his freshman courses in physics if students would ask him what are we gonna cover this semester his answer was doesn't matter what we cover or matters would you discover then you proceed from there if you learn how to question to search to find answers and then you're okay whatever you study well we're gonna be puzzled by some very big and seemingly intractable questions tonight what holds them together is social justice which as the Dean has explained is a major theme for the hary program but it's a big vague noun you know social justice what is it to you well I think it's captured reasonably well by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the social and economic provisions the second part of the of the 1948 Universal Declaration especially article 25 which lists the rights the inherent rights that humans ought to have health education freedom so on that's a good encapsulation of justice but it's and of course all the countries practically all the countries in the world signed up for no one observes it but some more cynically than others and it's a unattractive feature of our own country that it was rejected almost explicitly so Jean Kirkpatrick the Kirkpatrick the Secretary of State under the Reagan administration when she was asked about the socio-economic provisions of the Universal Declaration simply dismissed it as what she called a letter to Santa Claus Paula drove Bronski who's the assistant secretary for human rights under the first Bush administration later said the idea that there are social and economic rights is a myth that we have to dispel and in fact if you look at the comparative records of the wealthy countries the OECD countries the richer countries about 30 of them the United States ranks very low it's a ranks about 30th or 31st alongside of Greece and Turkey poorer countries which is astonishing because we're the richest and most powerful country in world history with incomparable advantages and in fact there are severe attacks on social and economic rights proceeding right before our eyes these are all issues that we should be deeply concerned about some of it may be structural the Constitution of the United States as a negative rights Constitution so the things that you name is critical to social justice are not constitutionally protected let's start with you talk about health and and in let's pivot to climate change and in healthy environment there are some young people who brought a lawsuit in which they're arguing that there in that there should be a constitutional right to them as a future generation to a world in which the environment is inhabitable and safe but it's definitely going to hit choppy water legally you've talked about it you've talked about the Doomsday Clock which was first set in the 1940s please tell the audience what that's what that clock is and how it relates to the current status of our environment the Doomsday Clock was established in 1947 shortly after the first and so far luckily only use of nuclear weapons by a distinguished group of physicists and brought in political analysts under the auspices of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists the leading professional journal on nuclear issues and it was set it's the the hand of the clock is set a certain distance from midnight midnight means terminal disaster were finished the first setting in 1947 was seven minutes to midnight and then it's oscillated over the years in 1953 it reached the point closest to midnight two minutes to midnight that was because the United States first then later the Soviet Union that exploded hydrogen bombs that signaled the fact that human intelligence had reached the point where we had created the means to completely wipe ourselves out on everyone else and after that it's going up and back a couple of years ago about two years ago it was moved that the clock was moved forward to three minutes to midnight and at that point for the first time they took into account the effect of environmental catastrophe and the fact that it's not being both the threat of nuclear war which had been the earlier concern and now the threat of environmental catastrophe moved at the three minutes to move midnight because the threats are not being addressed last January immediately after the inauguration of President Trump the clock was moved another half minute towards midnight two and a half minutes close as it's been since 1953 actually this is there's one point when it was would have been moved even closer that was 1962 the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis would have been moved to one minute the midnight but it happened that the crisis was not at the point where they made the annual decision so it's not registered there but in fact it's a important book about the Cuban Missile Crisis called one minute to midnight but that's that's where we stand and I think frankly that I just had an interview with The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists about this and suggested that last march should have been moved even closer to midnight that was a remarkable discovery which should have been on the front pages everywhere but as buried a group of quite distinguished scientists dealing with nuclear weapons issue hans christensen theodore postal a couple of others published a very important article in which they gave a careful analysis of the nuclear weapons modernization programs that are being that are being carried out under started in the Obama administration are being now escalated under the trump administration and they pointed out that these programs had succeeded in enhancing the killing capacity of the u.s. nuclear weapons for to the point where it could eliminate any deterrent and they say explicitly this is the kind of program that would be used by a country that's planning a nuclear first-strike will be able to protect itself from any retaliation they didn't argue that the United States is trying that they don't think it is but they say that any adversary would have to consider this now the adversary that everyone has in mind the only other major nuclear powers the Soviet Union and the Soviet strategists of course are perfectly aware of this they they have the very limited detection systems not like ours our detection systems are satellite controlled you can detect the launch of a missile there's our still radar control so you're limited to the horizon they have not much warning time at a moment of tension and there are unfortunately plenty of possible moments of tension it's possible that strategic planners say in Russia would conclude there's a missile strike coming we better send off all our missiles or we're finished and in that in which case were all finished and in fact if you look at the history of the arms race that has come very close quite a few times back in 1983 the Reagan administration had initiated a program called able archery you can look it up on the Internet the idea was to test Russian defenses by simulating air naval and air and naval attacks on the Soviet Union even including threatened nuclear attacks and the point was to make all this obvious so they would we'd see how they'd react and then learn something about their defenses well it turns out they took it pretty seriously when the Russian archives finally came out it turns out not very surprisingly that they were concerned that there was an actual plan for a missile attack and you take a look at the US strategic analyst journals they now say we came very close to war and advertently right about at that time there was in the Soviet we now know there was in the Soviet Union a warning of a missile of a US missile attack there are automated systems incidentally our automated systems fail all the time other hundreds of cases where the automated systems have warned of a missile attack but there was human intervention which prevented the the response that's programmed no that's happened frequently and our systems are much more sophisticated than theirs so we can be sure that they had many more errors well there was such a case and I think it was 1984 there was a warning of an American missile attack by the automated systems there's the protocol is that it there's a particular officer who receives the information his name happens to be stanislav petrov he is supposed to transmit it to the higher military authorities they decide whether to launch a retaliatory strike he simply decided not to transmit it he concluded that there were not enough missiles detected to make it look like an authentic attack so he just made a decision not to transmit the order that's probably why we're here it literally and it's not the only time he died recently and some was recognized for having done this year not the Soviet Union he was not our artificial intelligence might make that situation worse because of may be programs that intervene with doubt that human judgment call but before I have a follow-up on the nuclear threat I want to go back a minute to the to the climate change and I know you see both of these as two of the most important existential threats that we face this is really a political question can't we assume that everybody cares enough about their children and their grandchildren and beyond that they want a livable world for them which would mean to me an inhabitable climate without extreme weather and rising seas and the kind of environmental disruptions that impair human life on the one hand if that's reasonable to assume then question one what explains the persistent political divide on the issue and and then the second part is is if a lot of people believe things are that bad that the Doomsday Clock is that close why do they have children what young people decide not to for exactly that reason hmm no that's happened before in the early sixties when the threat of nuclear war seemed very severe there were young people had decided there's no point having children why go on but these questions are very poignant and severe right where we are it's not a secret that we are the only country in the world that is refusing to participate in since last November that will since last January in the international efforts to address the climate change a threat one of the international meeting is convening right now in fact cop 23 there were three countries that didn't sign that that opposed the Paris agreement of course the United States said was instrumental in initiating them under the Obama administration but the Republican Party not just President Trump the entire Republican leadership takes the position that we shouldn't do anything about climate change you take a look at the last primaries every single candidate Republican candidate either denied that what is happening is happening or said the moderates Jeb Bush Kasich said yes probably happening but we shouldn't do anything about it so case is just position that was yes of course anthropogenic human initiated climate change is taking place but the way he put it was we're gonna burn coal in Ohio and we're not gonna polish ways forward so we don't do anything about it now there were three countries the United States Nicaragua and Syria Nicaraguan Syria had not joined the cup 22 the earlier negotiations Paris negotiations Nicaragua hadn't joined because they thought the conditions were not stringent enough they wanted to be much more correctly I think but they finally joined Syria hadn't joined was they weren't able to sell what send a delegate now they've both joined that leaves the united states and splendid isolation not only refusing to participate in the international efforts to deal with this impending catastrophe but even dedicated to escalate the crisis by increasing the use of fossil fuels and it's pretty remarkable to see it's not just the administration that just read the business pages of you know not only in the United States the Financial Times in London and the leading world's leading Business Journal pretty liberal in general attitude when they describe the prospects for fossil fuel production its euphoric there's article after article talking about the wonderful prospect you know they just discovered a new field somewhere new new deep digging deep water exploration techniques will open up new fields in the Gulf of Mexico it's a great thing and so on with barely a word saying that unless those fossil fuels are left in the ground we're doomed and it's pretty serious just recently Steven chose the former Nobel laureate in physics it was the energy head of the Energy Department under Obama gave a talk at the National Academy in which he pointed out that about a hundred and twenty-five thousand years ago the earth had a temperature just slightly above today's and at that point there were perhaps roughly ten meters of the sea level was about ten meters for six to ten meters higher than today just imagine life in a planet where the sea level was a couple of meters higher than it is now he also pointed out that 800 million people live within about thirty meters of sea coast and we're facing a monstrous catastrophe unless something is done quite seriously and yet we're lagging behind in fact most of the world is as well some countries are doing better than others Denmark is moving too close to a hundred percent renewable energies China which is a major polluters acting taking pretty serious steps to cut back coal production to move towards renewable energy towards imposing a sharp restrictions on automobile pollution so on we're outliers at this point not entirely because states and localities are doing significant things in many cases and individuals as well but at the federal level we're the sole country that is not committed formally to trying to address this very severe catastrophe and some of the things that are happening are almost surreal there's a Senate hearings that have been that are taking place some president Trump's latest appointment of nominee for a high position and the environmental agency heart wait I think her name is her view is that to talk about climate change is paganism the governor of your state Wisconsin Scott Walker denies climate change but he's willing to talk about climate resilience so we're allowed to plan for climate resilience meaning do something to deal with the catastrophe that's coming but we're not allowed to call it climate change I mean this kind of denialism is I can't think of words to describe it it's utterly shocking in fact November 8 was a pretty striking date in that respect and of emerets of course the date of the American election at the same time in Morocco Marrakech Morocco there was an international conference underway cop21 which was a follow-up to the Paris negotiations that was intended to put incidentally the Paris negotiations themselves at night 2015 were aimed at a verifiable treaty but that had to be withdrawn because the Republican Congress would not have tolerated so it had to be a voluntary agreement which of course much weaker a couple 22 in Morocco was intended to carry this forward on November 8th the World Meteorological Organization delivered its description of the state of the climate and the threats and it was a pretty dire warning that was November 8th after that the conference basically pretty much terminated it turned to the question of how the world can go forward with the most important powerful country in the world in fact most powerful in world history pulling out of the effort that's our responsibility it's very serious going back to your question I don't know the answer I don't know how people can face this prospect see what's going to be the lives for their own children and grandchildren and not be willing to dedicate themselves to it I'm puzzled by that simple thing and they you know you've alluded to two things that I think might give us a little optimism one is the cities and the states that are reacting but there's lots of reason to think that won't be enough and I agree with you there and then there are those who think science can save us that there will be strategies that emerge there but in the short run the hary program you know this is this terrific Tucson now based program that's trying to act strategically for our region and and in the world say that you're on the board with the people responsible for allocating funds and grants and it's it's not it's not open to them to say there's nothing we can do and so they want to intervene what advice would you give them about how to choose among projects in the short run to try to advance this ball well even something as simple as using LED lights has a very significant impact the the shifts of the transportation system to public transportation would or even to less destructive automobiles would be a significant effect solar panels for heating in a place especially a place like Arizona with the sun's shining all the time it's kind of shocking not to see solar panels everywhere on every house and that can be done there are steps that can be taken from the individual level to the federal level to the international level that can make a major impact the optimistic part of this is that we do have the capacity to not to end the threat but at least to significantly mitigated and to ensure that there will be likelihood high high probability that organized human life can continue at a proper level we have that capacity if we can use it I want to pick up on something else that you were talking about I mean it's it's it's astonishing the retreat of the United States from the Paris Accord but but it's it's part of a larger phenomenon I think and I'm wondering what you think might explain it that the United States has in so many respects now retreated from globalism and there's been a corresponding I think not unrelated rise and populism and I'm wondering why now with respect to the retreat we can look to the travel ban to the wall to anti sanctuary jurisdiction penalties the plight of so many refugees including environmental refugees the weakening of the State Department and global diplomacy and other parts of the federal government that are best positioned in most cases to deal with things from a national in an international perspective what is going on well the United States is an unusual country in many ways for one thing that's it has by comparative standards it's a huge country has internal resources agriculture minerals holman relatively homogeneous population once the native population was pretty much exterminated it's it's been able to for much of its history though the United suppose they buy by 1900 the United States was far and away the biggest economy in the world in fact Richard them the next several economies put together but it was not a major actor in the world it was a kind of an observer had its own conquered the territory expanded some but it was not the major international actors were England France the United States was behind the United States looked inward and in fact as late as before the Second World War let's say the 1930s if somebody in the United States wanted to be a physicist let's say chances are they'd go to Germany or if you wanted to be a writer or artist you'd go to France you didn't stay here I mean I saw this myself when I was started teaching at MIT in the 1950s one of the things one of the kinds of sort of I hate to call it a course but the things that I were teaching were fake courses where you tried to teach graduate students how to fake their way through reading exams German and French and this went on until the 1960s and it was a residue of the pre-war period when the great science was done in French and German if you wanted to be an engineer physicist in the 1920's 1930's he had to read french of german by the second time of the Second World War that was over the United States then became preeminent geopolitically many other respects so the idea then of course students didn't have to read French in German anymore because everything was in English but there was a kind of a lag you know took about fifteen years before this was finished but that's a sign of what the country was like the country was a back cultural backwater I know the Second World War did change that but only for part of the country part of it remains what it was kind of internationally a cultural backwater and we see that in many different respect and many by different many different measures and it's showing up now and these almost a cosmic level of threat of global destruction it means there's a huge educational effort required in the United States to bring about an understanding of the nature of the world in which we live and you can see easily why this should be the case I mean there's no other country where you can travel 3,000 miles and seem to be in the same place from where you started you go from Boston to Los Angeles let's say the stores are the same the language is the same the people look the same a little bit of difference but not much if you're in Europe when you go 100 miles it's culturally different different language and so on so the understanding that there's a rich complex world is just part of life in most of the world but not here that's partly just because of the history immigrants came eliminated the indigenous population spread over the continent developed their own unique life which in many ways was the most advanced in the world I don't have to tell you the US Constitution as was well beyond anything that existed in the world in terms of progressive values at the time and that's all on the positive side much of it remains but there's a negative side to well though there's also we're not alone and and in this impulse away from global partnerships and or in the rise in population I think that's happening in Europe as well but let me let me do a few a few let me focus on a few things that some people have suggested have huge explanatory power in addition to this we're a big island and we think of ourselves as the center of the universe that you've just named let's talk about race you know there have there I think of Tanna haha sees coaches the first white president essay and the Atlantic month monthly and Tana Hafiz thesis is that race was doing most if not all the work in the most recent election that that's really what explains the resistance to globalism and the rise in population and so it's a race resentment others would say and I would be one of them that don't forget about gender it's consistently Elita dand discounted as a contributing factor religion which you've written about and observed is a is a cultural Universal but face it religion has inherent secessionist aspect to it you're faithful to the religion it can mean defiance of collective norms the authority of the secular world mandates like non-discrimination all these things may have been part of the olio of things and and of just the brute economic despair of some people in the United States said we've had it we're going in another direction what do you what do you think about these possible explanations for where we are right now I think all of those are factors but there's an overriding factor that should not be ignored and that's simply economic and political policy the post-war period post-world War two there have been really two phases of social and economic policy the first phase was what's sometimes called regulated capitalism roughly second world war up to the mid 1970s there was the New Deal regulations were in place in the financial system there were no financial crises that banks were banks there were places where you put extra money and they lent it to somebody for starting a business sending the kid to college whoever it was there was a sharp break the that was the highest growth period in history sustained growth period he got a fairly Galit Arian growth the lowest quintile did about as well as the highest quintile that was cut there was a sense of steady constant progress there was also progress on social issues the civil rights movement that developed error beginnings of the women's right move rights movement those early stages the environmental movement all of this was taking place through the 1950s and 60s labor activism was significant in fact rising by the early seventies there was a militant labor organizing by women in service industries and so on as well as the farmers workers and so on all that was taking place one this essentially ended by the late seventies really took off under Reagan the same was happening internationally of Reagan and Thatcher we moved to a different phase the neoliberal phase of the phase that undercuts social commitments terms to freed freed up financial institutions to become monstrous investment oriented predatory institutions not crisis after crisis each worse than the last essential stagnation for most of the population and wages and incomes in fact by 2007 which was the peak of success of the neoliberal program lots of euphoria about what was called the Great Moderation everything's wonderful real wages for American workers were below what they were in 1979 when the experiment began that's the that is the background and that same pretty much seems happening in Europe with the what they call the austerity programs this is all also led to a decline in democracy as you as wealth an income concentrate and much of the populations stagnates and wealth and income that translates at once into political choices and legislation by almost obvious mechanisms and it keeps the vicious cycle Moin that's true and what's now called populism like not a very good term in my view but what it is is a a general anger and contempt for institutions which has plenty of justification the institutions are not working for people so they thought you can see it in the electoral system so the less the recent elections in Europe almost everyone is an attack on the centrist parties that have been governing the center left center right parties they're undermined you get the forces on either side coming up same happened here the most dramatic aspect of the 919 a 2016 election a year was not so much the election of Trump the nomination of Trump it's not that surprising for a billionaire with huge economic support and massive media support to be nominated as a party candidate a little unusual but not off the you know off the spectrum what really broke with a hundred years of political history was the Sanders campaign this is somebody who came out of nowhere nobody knew him I used the scare word socialist which meant basically new dealer no financial support no media support probably little one the Democratic Party nomination if it hadn't been for mation ations of party managers might have won the election that's completely a total break from American political history which is a history of pretty much bought elections there's substantial academic political science research which was quite convincingly that a very a very good predictor of electoral success is simply campaign spending and so only that's not true of President the Senate and House very good study that came out about a year ago from fine political scientist at UMass Boston Tom Ferguson and a couple of colleagues who've done most of the work on this they did a study of House and Senate elections from mid-80s to the present just asking to what extent can you predict electoral success simply by campaign spending and it's almost straight line it's the kind of prediction you rarely get in the social sciences and that means of course not just electoral success but legislative programs the Sanders campaign broke radically from that and it's similar to what's happening and say the French election where a candidate who came out of also didn't come out of the political system Mike Rome became won the election and the major parties were marginalized I think a lot of this is simply the effect of the collapse of of the I wouldn't say collapse but the turn of political institutions to service to thee to extreme wealth and corporate power neglecting the population which you see in all sorts of ways and naturally that leads to anger and fear irrationality the policies that can be can be and sometimes are hopeful and constructive but can be very destructive as well its leading to in Europe what sometimes called a liberal democracy like Obama in Hungary where you have democratic forms but really authoritarian structures a lot of this I think is simply the result of the shift to the neoliberal market-oriented programs with diminish the role of individuals and society in favor of concentrated wealth and power which tend to escalate and in fact if you take a look at Trump voters it's they're mostly moderately affluent petty-bourgeois the some working-class but that's not the overwhelming majority but these are people who feel that with justice that things have stagnated we there was you know it's partly myth but partly reality there was a sense that this that each generation is doing better than the last we're moving forward there's a better future and so on that came to an end it's we're not our children are not going to do better than we do the opportunities are not gonna be greater except for us very small and shrinking minority and that sense is overwhelming and I think you can trace it to the socio-economic decisions that were made that shifted the nature of policy these are choices they're not economic and necessities the specific choices you see them in the structure of the World Trade Organization agreements which are basically investor rights agreement don't have to be that way there are other ways for international trade to be organized but this has been happening now for a generation and the population reacts now that's interacts with the factors that you mentioned which are certainly their race and gender the religion and others are major factors in the United States they take particular forms related to our own history go into well there's a lot in that I think there's there's you're describing beautifully a structural phenomenon and driven by some economic principles the neoliberalism that you've identified in your work that translates into the work or may produce the the economic stratification and despair but I wonder I don't think that the average voter understands that the average voter understands that there's a image that's been used which I think captures it very accurately it was actually used by aurélie culture on the sociologists have studied the Louisiana bayous and tried to figure out what how the people is a very sympathetic report of people of people who feel this is basically deep red you know Republican people who vote for candidates who are destroying the Bayou in which they live but are themselves environmentalists they want to preserve it to try to figure out what's going on why are people apparently voting under the against their own interests at what she comes up with as an image that the people themselves accepted when she interacted with them that we're standing in a line behind us our parents and grandparents they worked hard made a better life made a better life for us where we should be moving forward but we're not the line is stopped ahead of us there are some people going to the stratosphere but that doesn't bother us much you know what bothers us is that we're stuck and why are we stuck because the federal government is working for the people behind us the immigrants african-americans Hispanics people back they're worthless people who aren't really working the way we do and our parents do when they're putting them ahead of us so you get this kind of attitude and that people can understand they can understand that weird that the line that we're in has stopped moving forward there's a interesting study that just came out today yesterday i think maybe the washington post an analysis that a journalist went to a former Steel City Johnstown Ohio which was a steel major steel mining area and very pro Trump and he was interested in finding out why the people are the people how do the people react to the fact that Trump has not come through on any of the promises that he made in fact he didn't go into it but he's actually making their lives worse how do they feel about that and the answer that surprised him surprised me is that they don't care they say we know he's never gonna bring back the steel mills we know the promises are all nonsense but we don't care he expresses our anger every crazy thing he does we like because he's thumbing his nose at those people who are our enemies who are of who have made the progress stop for us our town is over it's never gonna reconstitute they'll never be steel mills our children will go away it's all collapsing we can't have the old life that we thought were my have but at least we can express our anger at the people who are doing this to us a lot of them they don't know who's doing it to them I mean that's a different question but but you can see it's a framework in which scapegoating works very well and the fact that we had a black president was not a small factor the racism just exploded that's why you have 25 percent of Republicans thinking that Obama's maybe Antichrist I think a majority of Republicans forget the exact number I think he's a who came from Kenya you know things like that a lot of it was just a reflection of deep-seated American racism witches goes right back to the origin of the country's never been eradicated um I wanna I want to shift I know we started a little bit late now and I have time for the audience but I recommend everybody requiem for the American Dream which is one of his more recent books and in it dr. Chomsky says that what we need is a functioning democracy with informed persons and I want to shift to how does that happen and given the disruptions in or that where the the flaws in the marketplace of ideas and freedom of speech model your definition of a functioning democracy includes the notion of informed persons but let me just challenge that with two clusters why should we believe that freedom of speech and persuasion are going to help promote critical engagement and an informed electorate today given two things or two clusters of obstacles and the first one is We the People we are poor thinkers we don't seek enlightenment if there is all the more studies that being that coming out of the eye area suggest that when we are you accepted but most of us aren't in fourth grade thinking things through in a careful way we have wildly imperfect human brains we live in information silos choosing the bubbles and with our cognition weaknesses and our confirmation biases the big and sand and striking insight is that we're not looking for facts we're not looking for truth we're not looking for enlightenment we're looking to be entertained often or ass waged in some way and we use information to persuade other people and that's not necessarily based on the facts so that's that's cluster1 we're not good at thinking the audience and cluster - you've written a lot about the people talking to us sets of them have distorting influences that make it very difficult for us to extract the truth you're very critical of the mainstream media the propaganda model of the corporate mass media is something you've written about there's every reason to be skeptical of government if you don't like an idea just cut off the funding or if you think people shouldn't taking the niaz on patriotic say things like fire the SOPs third thing that you've pointed out that I think is very worrisome - is social media and under private control they are the new sensors and and we may not even know the extent to which they're distilling information and then finally sorry for the long question you blame us campus leaders that were Craven we've created architectural plans so that large demonstrations can't be possible we've hiked student debt created debt peonage and have adopted a kind of business model for a complicated set of regions but that all these things make it harder for the audience to get good information in the first place even if we knew what to do if we could think straight through it plenty of plenty of barriers go down but the point is they're all surmountable every one of these things that you mentioned is a human decision and human decisions can be changed you don't have to have I'm a business model for the universities is this a choice and a decision can be eliminated there was a time when I don't want to claim there was a golden age there always were plenty of problems but there was a time when a public education higher public education in the United States was essentially free we were a much poorer country in the 1940s and the 50s much poorer than we are today but education was pretty much free the GI Bill gave free education actually subsidized education to a substantial part of the population incidentally white male population that's a reflection of the phenomena that you were describing but a large part of the white male population which never would have gone to college was given the opportunity to do so and it was rewarding for them and it was beneficial for the country even private colleges were they weren't free but there was nothing like today so for example in 1945 I went to University of Pennsylvania Ivy League college it was a hundred dollars a year that's what was it maybe eight hundred dollars today and it was very easy to get a scholarship the the United States was at that time very much like what many other countries are like today other other countries from rich to poor have a pretty free higher education so Germany which is maybe the most successful state capitalist economy as your tire education is essentially free a Finland which has the highest records almost every year in educational attainment education is free right next to us Mexico poor country Unum the our education system is a pretty high level of lecture theorem appreciated the level of education but it's free now rich and four countries can do it the United States itself did it when it was a much poorer country there's no reason why that can't happen right now that just has no economic I feel compelled to add that's also the morale act and they think the we are a land-grant University and the idea that these places would be created to serve the community was born during the Civil War era with so if things can be very very bad and there can be people who rise up and say this is a sentence I'll say that that's one of the achievements of the United States was to create mass higher education the land grant system others the United States was really a pioneer in the mass public education so it's kind of shocking but we're now going back to the back of the line yeah I'm glad for your optimism there to say the least let me let me close this part with a more of a fun question that comes from my friend Tim good as soon I have in my pocket a one-time golden key and it's gonna allow you total access to a folder in the bowels of the United States government that's never and the archives never been seen before nobody's ever accessed it with a FOIA request and the only rule is it that the folder can't be about you all right what folder would you choose and why a lot of attractive possibilities for example there were just recently into new it was a new trove internal documents released about the u.s. involvement of the overthrow of the government of Iran in 1953 but a lot was apparently redacted it would be interesting to see what wasn't told and there are many things like that but the the case that I would use the golden key for myself and the puzzles me and Men interests me in many ways is the build-up to what has been described as the most dangerous moment in history which we already discussed the Cuban Missile Crisis phrases Arthur Schlesinger historian Kennedy confidant quite accurately described the 1962 Missile Crisis as the most dangerous moment in history how did it come about we only have very limited information about that some and it's tantalizing why did Nikita Khrushchev decided to put missiles in Cuba okay well a scholarship pretty much agrees that there were two major reasons the one was a major terrorist campaign that the Kennedy administration was waging against Cuba Schlesinger's words the campaign was bringing the terrors of the earth to Cuba it was under the control of Robert Kennedy he was it was his prime responsibility was to organize a mass terrorist campaign against Cuba it's not much discussed here but it was pretty serious and it was intended to lead to an uprising perhaps followed by an American invasion in October 1962 that's when the missiles were placed we don't know for sure that the Cubans and the Russians aware of all the details but it's quite possible that they at least surmised and perhaps knew that invasion was planned to 19th in October 62 that's one factor and the nature of this campaign is pretty shocking actually something was just released recently hidden in the back pages when the the kennedy archives were just released the assassination archives that a lot of publicity about that you know a lot of talk about what sleazy operations were going on who was doing this and that but there was something hidden in there or which I think was a something that really should be pursued turns out that at one point McGeorge Bundy who was the national security adviser serious intellectual former dean that impressive right not really forward former dean of Harvard he was leading the liberal intellectual he was asked about using chemical and biological warfare against Cuba as part of the campaign and he responded that he thought that would be appropriate if we could make sure that we're never identified as the source I'd like to learn a little more about that so there's that's one aspect the other thing that was happening was actually sort of related to North Korea today when first Jeff it came into power and Russia a couple years after Stalin died he understood that Russia could not compete with the United States economically it's much more less far less developed country and the arms race was an overwhelming burden which prevented Russian economic development actually North Korea to date is taking the same position it's worth thinking about the and what he proposed he proposed that there be a mutual reduction reduction of offensive military weapons the United States incidentally was way ahead in every respect he proposed this to the Kennedy administration and in fact even unilaterally moved to cut back offensive Russian forces the Kennedy Nation considered it rejected it and initiated the biggest arms growth in in history in response well part of first choughs placing the missiles in Cuba was apparently an effort to try to compensate slightly for this tremendous imbalance those two years 61-62 it would be really interesting to discover what the thinking and detail was that led to these decisions and they are decisions remember that's important that led to the most dangerous moment in history I think it would be extremely interesting to find out what they were thinking these are this was an administration of you know the best and the brightest as they called themselves leading intellectuals Harvard MIT intellectuals what were they thinking when they made these decisions just like today let me see if I can I don't yeah okay this is going to enable me to watch CNN apparently that's not what it's supposed to tone estimate yes sir can I take a minute there's certainly no fear anything we'll be right back let me take this moment while we're waiting for gnome to return so you won't have to hear this at the end tomorrow night at the loft cinema and in specifically at the loft Film Fest professor Chomsky will be honored with the lofty achievement award he's appeared in over 25 films so he is very deserving of this award and in recognition of the award there will be in 25th anniversary screening of the film based on his book manufacturing consent and that event is if it's not completely sold out it's almost entirely sold out so if you want to make your way over there tomorrow night I recommend going a little early and seeing if you can get one of the specially reserved tickets next week in collaboration with various community partners SBS is co-hosting to featured events on women's empowerment and human rights to coincide with International Education Week the first of these is a screening of the documentary film the tent village by Nelly Mia Abrams on Tuesday November 14th at 6 p.m. ATS at the loft and that is also nearly sold out and tickets a few tickets are available on the lost website and then secondly SBS is pairing up with YWCA and a number of other community organizations and partners to bring international actor and activist and get this you a PhD in molecular and cellular biology Dipti mehta who will present her one-woman play honor confessions of a mumbai courtesan on Friday November 17th at 7:00 p.m. at the temple of music and art and you can find tickets there by going to our calendar SBS dot Arizona slash Arizona dot edu slash events and this is a benefit for the YWCA and portions of the proceeds will go to supporting their important work for women and children in southern Arizona and then finally I'm pleased to announce that this coming spring semester were thrilled once again to offer the opportunity for community members as well as undergraduates to participate in the course what is politics which will be Co taught by Professor professor Chomsky and my colleague professor Marv Waterstone now you a students will have priority for this class but registration for our new SBS community classroom will open on November 29th with the limited number of seats available for community members on a first-come first-served basis so keep an eye on our website community classroom Arizona edu and we'll release more details about the course and how to register okay so back to the show thanks for your patience [Applause] so we have time for a few questions one of them is are you gonna run for president in 2020 and then there's a little one in the audience who wants to know if you can't speak how can you think sorry if you can't speak how can you think it's this question from a seven-year-old and it proves your point about kids doesn't it nor did the more to the that's a tough to tough for him to answer tell your child it's too hard hmm so another one would be say a little more about social media and the control that the in the private hands of information and what you think that means for the future well social media has had an interesting impact on our social cultural and political life it's been pretty well discussed I'm not saying anything you don't know on the one hand they do offer opportunities for expression for reaching out other people they're the main technique of organizing these days they're the means by which teachers communicate with their students groups organize and form and interact they provide options which unfortunately often aren't used to attain it attained in the to go to media sources information sources that are otherwise rarely available all of that is positive on the other hand as it's been well studied they do form bubbles people and I think I do it myself I'm not blaming others we tend to go towards the sources that basically we except that agree with their general point of view that when you read a newspaper whatever one thinks of the main media you read the New York Times releasing some range of opinion if you go only to the sources that reinforce your own views you do end up with sulfur in forcing enclosed bubbles which separate from one another and that's been one of the factors that has led to a pretty dramatic polarization in the United States I mean you go back in 30 or 40 years if a person was a Republican or a Democrat that didn't make much difference you interacted the your friends in or married all sorts of things statistics are pretty striking by now these are almost separate groupings and the it's led to a degree of kind of fanaticism connected with the political labels and so there was recently uh an interesting study of just Republicans not Trump voters Republicans a majority slight majority of connection with 2020 a slight majority said that if Trump decided to delay or cancel the elections they'd go along with it there was one question that was asked was what do you believe you know one of the sources you believe that Trump was kind of up in the stratosphere the major media practically nothing even Fox News was low this is a very dangerous phenomenon of almost worship for a charismatic leader that I felt all my life frankly and wrote all my life that if the United States ever had an honest charismatic leader we'd be in deep trouble I mean Hitler type someone who's not a crook not a thug you know but dedicated fascist leader I think the country it's the kind of country that could succumb to that and I think we've seen signs of it over the years it's never happened Joe McCarthy for example was just too much of a thug Richard Nixon was you know couldn't he just didn't have that capacity but somebody might come I don't think Trump is is either just too much of a con man but somebody could come along who could take this anger fear sense of betrayal you know everyone's against us and our lives are collapsing Lee and organize it into a force that could be extremely dangerous and I think the social media one and their negative aspect does contribute to that and when you see when you were talking about all the barriers that there are towards developing an informed educated understanding population that's the basis for any functioning democratic society this is one of them but we should bear in mind that there's nothing inherent about this I mean I mentioned before at the beginning that in the 1930s much much more desperate period in term in objective terms the working class was an educator lot of large parts of the working class were not only educated and informed but really part of high culture and that goes way back you go back to the 19th century the early days of the Industrial Revolution the if Irish blacksmith in Boston may have been illiterate had a little bit of money he would hire a boy to read through him well is working and read to him men read what we call classics that is contemporary literature you take a look at the fascinating literature from what are called the factory girls the young women from the forums who moved into the textile factories around the Boston area that's the beginnings of the American industrial revolution mid 19th century they had their own journals they published the journals and the journals one of the things that they were bitter they bitterly condemned the industrial system as did male workers as well which was taking away their freedom turning them into automaton to the control of others they were selling themselves instead of selling their products losing their dignity and rights as free Americans bitter condemn nations of the industrial system and one of the condemnations is taking away their culture they had a live rich culture there's a study of the British working-class thousand-page detailed academic study by Jonathan rose of just the reading habits of the British working-class he concludes they were better educated than the aristocrats there's nothing inherent in having an ignorant population it's a very modern phenomenon partly it's related to the breakdown of unions which were a Center for organization education cultural activities activism and it can be reconstituted I mean I've seen it all over incidentally I should say that you also see in popular Park populations which have very little education that they have a deep understanding of the way the world works we have it in our own history there was an authentic populist movement in the United States not what's called populism today but the populism of the late 19th century the radical farmers began in Texas spread to Kansas other Midwestern states became organized they wanted to free themselves from the control of the northeastern bankers merchants who were basically dominating controlling their lives and they don't they didn't have much as you form allege ocation Muslim probably barely went to school but they had a very precise can accurately of the social and economic forces that were governing their lives and they organized very effectively to try to overcome them was finally crushed by force but it was very significant maybe the most democratic movement in American history actually a lot of the people fled to the north afterwards and became part of the labor Democratic base of Canada part of the reason why Canada has had more progressive politics all of this is real and can certainly be reconstituted we've exported the wrong things a second question that someone in the audience had goes back to the the first set of questions we asked you and it's about your intellectual journey everyone knows that your footprint in linguistics is deep and abiding and you know one of the one of the most important figures but here you've had in all of this tonight such an impact in the realm of social justice and as a public intellectual why didn't you stay in your lane Gordon white what what what possesses you what drives you to engage people on these issues beyond your your narrow field of expertise I haven't asked that occasionally but I find it kind of puzzling because seriously the right question is why it doesn't everyone do it and if the problems are it's not deep it's not quantum physics we can all handle it we can all deal with it it's of enormous significance for our own lives the lives of people we care about for the world for future generations it's just hard to understand why it isn't a leading factor and everybody's normal than life for many people it is should be for many more I told you he wasn't a normal 4th grader so a third question before we do the final one of the night has to do with the young people in the audience and or those who may watch this later if they wanted to pursue a path of of social justice what should they be doing now and what should they be studying where would you guide them say it was one of your own grandchildren coming to you and saying I I very much admire the way you've lived your life I would like to do it too in these times and the ones that that lie ahead what would you tell him or her well I get a lot of letters from young people asking pretty much that question and I'm reduced to almost a form answer nobody can give you that advice these are things you have to understand figure out for yourself there are many different ways to live a very positive very constructive life for yourself and for others many different paths to follow and just have to find out which are the right ones for you college is an opportunity should be at best an opportunity to explore these options that does this University others offer many opportunities for exploration and investigation I should say the one of the most educational experiences I ever had was when I had a I was lucky to get a postdoctoral position at Harvard for four years in which I just had a a desk in the Widener Library a great library and just walking around the library and exploring was opening seeing the treasures of human thought and civilization in front of you just isn't opens up endless prospects for journeys and investigations and that's only one kind of work there's plenty of other ways to live which make a big difference in life so you just have to find the right way for yourself we differ and the last question of the night I think you actually have have have answered but let's ask it directly what is why should we be optimistic why should we be optimistic why should we be optimistic we basically have two choices we can we can decide that everything's hopeless give up help make sure that the worst will happen or we can recognize that there are opportunities there are significant challenges there are ways of addressing them whatever the possibility we can grasp the opportunities maybe we'll make a better world for ourselves and others it's not a real choice [Applause] welcome to Tucson Thank You Tony Lazzara tonight thank you [Applause]

Channel: collegeofsbs

Views: 59,143

Rating: 4.7288136 out of 5

Keywords: University of Arizona, College of SBS, UA College of Social & Behavioral Sciences

Id: QkTMdox56bY

Length: 102min 8sec (6128 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 15 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/tedemang]

Nice! ...Bonus: It does actually seem to be a new one.

[u/rattleandhum]

10 minutes of intro. To other users, skip ahead of that. OP, thanks for this lecture.

[u/VirginWizard69]

Noam just married a woman 30 years younger than him. It is good to see the old horn-dog has some spunk still left in him, even though he is so completely full of shit.