Chomsky as the world’s top public intellectual

A glance at the November issue of Prospect: Chomsky as the world’s top public intellectual

Noam Chomsky, the controversial author and professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been voted the world’s leading public intellectual from a list of 100 prominent thinkers compiled by the British magazine.

Mr. Chomsky first won acclaim for his transformational-grammar theory, which holds that the ability to form language is an innate human trait. But he is better-known for his outspokenness on political issues. He was a major voice against the Vietnam War and continues to argue against American policies that he finds immoral. He falls into a line of “oppositional intellectuals,” writes David Herman, a contributing editor for the magazine, in an explanation of the poll. Mr. Chomsky’s selection, he adds, proves that “we still yearn for such figures.”

More than 20,000 people participated in the magazine’s poll. The vote for Mr. Chomsky came as no surprise to Robin Blackburn, a visiting professor of historical studies at the New School, in New York. Mr. Chomsky, he writes, is a “brilliant thinker” who has stepped outside his own field of study in order to lambaste corrupt government policies.

Oliver Kamm, a columnist for The Times of London, does not share in the adoration. For starters, he writes, Mr. Chomsky combines elaborate rhetoric with thin evidence to support “dubious arguments.” Mr. Kamm particularly criticizes Mr. Chomsky’s opposition to American military interventions and arguments that equate American foreign policy with the actions of Nazi Germany.

“If this is your judgment of the U.S.,” writes Mr. Kamm, “then it will be difficult to credit that its intervention might ever serve humanitarian ends.”

That’s not necessarily so, says Mr. Blackburn, who notes that neither apartheid in South Africa nor Stalinism in Russia was eradicated by “bombardment and invasion.” Mr. Chomsky simply opposes putting American soldiers in harm’s way, he writes, where they can “do harm and acquire a taste for it.”

Mr. Blackburn’s and Mr. Kamm’s essays are contained in the article “For and Against Chomsky,” which is available at http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=
7110&AuthKey=fea7d83f56a70abc8c07b819492523e1&issue=512

Mr. Herman’s analysis, Global public intellectuals poll, is available at http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7078&AuthKey=fea7d83f56a70abc8c07b819492523e1&issue=512

A tally of the votes for all 100 candidates is available at http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/intellectuals/results