Noam Chomsky (1928–), Fierce and Formidable Critic of the Vietnam War

In the February 23, 1967, issue of the New York Review of Books, internationally acclaimed Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor of language and linguistics Noam Chomsky, probably the most famous and influential linguist in the world at that time, published “The Responsibility of Intellectuals” as a searing critique of the US role in the Vietnam War. It was a relentless exposé of both the conduct of the war and the justifications provided for it by leading American intellectuals and academics.¹ Chomsky tore apart the blatant contradictions and moral corruption of US policy, the widespread self-deception that insisted on America’s singular virtue both at home and in foreign affairs, the country’s duplicity of motives in Vietnam, its actual atrocities against the Vietnamese people, and, most of all, the culpability of those intellectuals who could and should have known better but who defended US policy from their protected positions in universities, think tanks, and in the government itself.

The sensation created by Chomsky’s essay was amplified when it was reprinted in his 1969 book American Power and the New Mandarins,² but Chomsky also translated his words into actions.³ He had already become a frequent public speaker, and now his venues rapidly enlarged from church basements and living rooms to lecture halls and open air demonstrations. Starting in 1965, he refused to pay half his taxes so as to diminish his involuntary contribution to the US war effort; was active in “Resist,” which supported draft resistance; and participated in a march on the Pentagon along with Jerry Rubin, William Sloane Coffin, Benjamin Spock, Norman Mailer, and others. Chomsky was arrested, spent time in jail, was put on Richard Nixon’s “enemy” list, and he seriously worried about losing his academic job although MIT remained supportive throughout.

Although he had started protesting the war in 1962, the late 1960s were a new stage in Chomsky’s career as a leading dissident and political activist. He followed his Vietnam War efforts with hundreds of books, essays, and public presentations that over the next half century covered topics ranging from Indochina to the Middle East, the Cold War, Afghanistan, the Iraq War, and the Occupy movement. In general, as his friend and admirer George Scialabba distills it, Chomsky argues that the American intelligentsia has been “effectively subordinated to the goals of the state,” while the fundamental purpose of American foreign policy has been to create a global economy open to control by American business and an ideology that serves to ensure popular support for “foreign intervention, defense spending, and surveillance or repression of dissidents.”⁴

Although to many it seemed as if Chomsky had made a huge change in direction in 1967 and had used his brilliant success and academic fame for his seminal work in linguistics, philosophy, and cognitive science to bolster support for hotly contested political issues, in fact Chomsky’s political convictions had very deep roots and went back to his childhood and adolescence.⁵ It is also untrue that after an intense period of intellectual innovation and creativity in the 1950s and early 1960s he was looking for a change of pace and direction. Rather, as he made clear in a 1986 interview, Chomsky felt morally compelled to take time away from his academic work and the pleasures it brought him to speak out and act politically.⁶ Whether or not it has been consolation to Chomsky himself, his legion of admirers worldwide are extremely grateful for the sacrifice he has made when he redirected the full force of his extraordinary intellectual and analytical talents to major political and ethical issues of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.