[Peace-discuss] Chomsky on Summers, MELEAC, etc.

[David Green]

Chomsky on Summers, MELEAC, etc.

Question:

A few weeks ago I heard your colleague Prof. Nancy
Hopkins give the Holtzman memorial lecture, talking
about sexism in the academy. As a story of personal
growth and empowerment I found it rather inspiring.
Are you familiar with the oversight committees that
she has set up at MIT? As she told the story, the
higher-ups in the administration were 
cooperative or supportive. Do you think that
institutional reforms of this kind (assuming that you
agree it's been successful at MIT) will succeed in the
face of institutional indifference or opposition? Do
you think that the vitriol directed against President
Summers has been justified? Did you know Stephen Jay
Gould?

Chomsky:

Hopkins is very reliable, and knows a lot more about
it than I do.; To my much more limited personal
knowledge, what she says is correct.; The
administration at MIT has been very supportive of
these efforts, and has taken a lot of initiative on
them.; I knew Steve Gould very well.; I have no doubt
that he was and would have continued to be a strong
advocate of overcoming these barriers at Harvard.;
Naturally, it's harder in the face of institutional
indifference or opposition, but students and faculty
can overcome that.; The universities are very
different in these respects from what they were 40
years ago. That's overwhelmingly the effect of mostly
student pressures, from the 60s, part of the general
civilizing effect of the activism of those and
subsequent years. Less prestigious universities have
better faculty and graduate student gender balance
than the major private schools (data is from
independent research carried out by the graduate
student unionization effort) - although the pay
discrepancies may actually be wider. 

Q: Which would you say reflects a more serious
deficit? 

C: In recent years there may have been some
backsliding (decline in women to men ratio);
definitely in private sector high technology there has
been. Would you speak to the moral dimensions of
this?I don't know the data, so can't comment.; One
would have to look carefully into the various factors
to make a sensible judgment.; On the moral dimension,
I don't think there can be any sensible disagreement.

Q: Our niversity president, Lee Bollinger, gave a talk
on academic freedom a few days before that (at the New
York bar association). You've commented some on the
attacks by the far right on members of Middle Eastern
studies departments - unfortunately, President
Bollinger's talk was a study in spinelessness,
although he gave a nice preamble. He asserted that
outside pressures on academia (e.g. WWI era loyalty
oaths, McCarthyism) were bad, but that it was okay for
the community of scholars to police itself (or words
to that effect), which ought to cover his anatomy
regardless of what action, if any, he decides to take.
What actions, if any, do you think the University
ought to take? I recall you've commented that
academics outside of regional studies departments are
generally highly indoctrinated (my recollection may be
mangled); could you expand on that point?

C: I didn't hear his talk, so can't comment.; I can't
comment here on the indoctrination of academics.; Have
written reams about it, and can only refer you to
that.; There is a margin of exceptions (and some
fields, like Latin American studies, are quite
different), but scholarship (meaning, academic
departments) is not very different from media and
intellectual commentary in obedience to doctrinal
constraints -- not very surprisingly.; Again, there is
plenty of documentation.; Judge for yourself. 

Q: What should universities do?

C: They should try to resist very strong outside
pressures from the basic institutional structure of
the society -- the corporate-state nexus of domination
-- and try to stay honest in scholarship, teaching,
and other activities.; That's never easy.; If anyone
were serious about universities "policing themselves,"
including Columbia, they'd be proposing measures to
deal with the overwhelming conformism of the academic
profession -- which appears to be well to the right of
the majority of the population on a great many crucial
issues of social, economic, and political policy.; Of
course, no one talks about that.; Columbia happens to
be under attack by dedicated totalitarians who are not
satisfied with overwhelming dominance and insist on
something like 100% conformism.; That would not be
hard to show.; E.g., take the claims that Columbia
faculty are anti-Israel (if not anti-Semitic).; Easy
to check.; Take a poll asking whether they believe
that Israel should have all the rights of any state in
the international system.; My guess is that the result
will be about 100% Yes, which is why the poll is not
undertaken by the totalitarians conducting the
attack.; A second poll might ask whether Israel should
have even more rights than any other state -- like
recognition of its "right to exist," something that no
state has, or its right to carry out actions that the
World Court has recently unanimously -- including the
American Justice -- condemned as illegal.; It would
not reach 100%, but would probably be very high.; Easy
to continue.;;

Q: In light of my defense of the MEALAC faculty, I
worry that my position on President Summers (that he
should be dismissed immediately) is hypocritical. If
we, in the spirit of Voltaire, defend the right of
free speech of everyone, including especially the
right of academics to unfettered expression of ideas
we find distasteful, and if we demand similar
consideration from our ideological adversaries, can we
then call for the dismissal of the President of
Harvard?

C: Summers is an employee of the trustees of Harvard.;
If he were to come out with support for the Nazis,
denial of the Holocaust, condemnation of US-Israeli
policies in the Israeli occupied territories,
condemnation of the appointment of a condemned
international terrorist to the chief counterterrorism
position in the world -- and on, and on -- he'd
probably be fired tomorrow, and 
there'd be no protest, except for those few of us who
believe in the spirit of Voltaire -- so few that they
can probably fit into a phone booth. Personally, I
wouldn't call for him to be dismissed for his
ridiculous comments -- the full range of them is quite
remarkable; And I don't think that's what has been at
issue.; His comical performance at that faculty
meeting were something of a last straw, I understand,
after a record of abrasiveness and contempt for the
faculty that had aroused plenty of resentment.; That's
within the scope of his role as Trustee-appointed
college president.; I would say that as Summers is not
(exclusively) an academic but also an administrator
the head of a powerful institution - he does not enjoy
the same protection regarding his position. On the
other hand, he clearly meant his comments to be taken
in an academic context; while Harvard has a worrying
history of sexism (and every other sort of
discrimination) I could not reasonably say that
Summers promotes the intellectual inferiority of women
as a matter of policy. 

Q: There are significant parallels with that French
holocaust denier (I can't remember his name). Are you
familiar with the case of Professor Thomas Klocek at
DePaul University in Chicago? I cant find reliable
information on the case, but its claimed that he was
fired for something he said to some Arab students
outside of class.

C: I don't know enough about Summers to comment on his
attitudes and actions in this regard.; There are not
even slight parallels with Robert Faurisson (who I
presume you are referring to).; He was suspended from
the University on grounds that he could not be
defended against violence after he had privately
published some obscure monographs denying the
existence of gas chambers, then brought to court,
later sentenced, for Falsification of History, in a
judgment that granted the Holy State the right to
determine Historical Truth and punish deviation from
it, a judgment that Stalin and Hitler would greatly
have admired.; There has been huge falsification about
this, and though he is a very famous figure in the US,
I suspect that virtually no one has read a word he has
written, or would even know where to find it -- not
that it would matter to the defenders of freedom of
speech in that telephone booth.; Again, there 
isn't even a remote parallel to Summers. Never heard
of Klocek.; However, racist anti-Arab diatribes are
very common in high places -- distinguished Harvard
faculty, for example.; Merely to illustrate, I'll
report a personal experience.; After Summers launched
a ludicrous and utterly dishonest campaign about
anti-Semitism at Harvard, I was asked by the
Anthropology Department to talk at a racism seminar on
the topic.; I said I thought it was too ridiculous to
discuss and wouldn't do it, but finally agreed.; I
began by recalling that there had been plenty of
anti-Semitism at Harvard into the early 1950s, giving
illustrations (which are well known), but that there
had been a significant change through the decade, and
by the 1960s it had effectively disappeared and Jews
were, in fact, highly privileged.; I then ended by
saying that one no longer reads distinguished Harvard
professors writing such things as . . . (and then)
giving actual quotes from distinguished Harvard
professors, but replacing "Arab" or "Palestinian" by
"Jew." There were gasps in the audience; I then added
that I had misled them, and read the actual racist
writings about Arabs and Palestinians. There was an
audible sigh of relief, and then the Q&A went on with
the usual hysteria about how everyone hates Jews and
Israel, etc. Tells one a lot about racism at Harvard.;
But though the faculty members in question would have
been severely censured, maybe removed, if the comments
had been about Jews, there is no such thought in this
case -- rightly of course. These, however, are the
real issues. Not just about the rampant anti-Arab
racism.;