Professor Noam Chomsky on the Future of American Policy

This Tuesday, Boston College had the great honor of welcoming renowned American intellectual Professor Noam Chomsky to our campus, to talk about the future of the United States with regards to both domestic and international affairs. Known as the father of modern linguistics, Professor Chomsky is also a cognitive scientist, political activist, and philosopher. His lecture at Boston College was highly anticipated and extremely well attended - the entirety of Gasson 100 was filled with people, and others listened in from outside the room to Professor Chomsky's views on America's path forward at home and around the world. The lecture itself was interesting and engaging, and at times amusing, and it was a privilege to all that attended to hear from such an influential person.

Professor Chomsky started his lecture by noting the historical election of Barak Obama as President of the United States, touching on the significance of having a black family in the White House. He went on to mention how this even was a result of the cultural changes that had been evolving since the 1960's in this country. He did say, however, that it was cultural development and not institutional change that made this possible, and went on to make this distinction one of the main points of his lecture, as he delved into the concept of American democracy as compared to that in other countries. The nation that was the basis of much of his comparison was Bolivia, which explained was engaged in real democracy, where individuals could and did have great influence over politics and policy. This as compared to the democracy of the US as seen in President Obama's campaign, with individuals looking for a mandate and leader to follow, without attempts to define that mandate for themselves. Citing this comparison, Professor Chomsky argued that, to a large degree, the aim of US democracy is, by necessity, to undermine democracy elsewhere.

Professor Chomsky qualified this interesting argument by calling modern times the "Age of Orwell" and saying that when the US speaks of "promoting democracy" that such a statement is a sort of doublespeak in that what is actually done in some cases is quite the opposite. He explained that the difference between democracy in name, as in the US, compared to democracy in action, using the example of Bolivia, could result in a clash of civilizations.

He went on to talk about the process of elections in the US today, posing the opinion that elections are now run almost entirely by the Public Relations industry that attempts to manipulate people's decisions by creating a predominantly uniformed electorate. As evidence of this concept, Professor Chomsky said that people identified with President Obama's campaign and were of the opinion that he stood for the things that they stood for because the campaign, as all other modern campaigns, was run not on obvious statements of opinions on issues, but on personality and general likability. The campaign discussions, he explained, tried to focus on anything but what really mattered.

The next topic of Professor Chomsky's lecture was the current financial situation in the US. The big question, he though, was that of "Who owes what to whom?" and he proceeded to describe the issues with this question based on the ideas of real democracy versus the views of people in the US. He said that in a democracy, the public would take over the banks in a situation like that which the US currently finds itself in, but that the US public has been conditioned to think that nationalization of private institutions is bad. This was another example, too, of the ways in which democracy could be seen as being undermined by the US version of it. Along the same lines was Professor Chomsky's idea that the capitalist society of the US is not conducive to the effective practice of democracy as capitalism encourages each individual to work only for himself, not for the benefit of society at large.

The main point that Professor Chomsky made about American foreign policy under the Obama administration was an agreement with the opinion of Condoleezza Rice, that for the most part, foreign policy would be run in much the same vein as it had during the presidency of George W. Bush. He also talked about the need for the US to maintain positive relations with our allies as we move forward.

During the question and answer portion of the lecture, Professor Chomsky fielded a question about the role of the Internet in the processes of democracy. He was quick to point out that the development of the Internet had come out of the state sector for about thirty years at its inception, and that only more recently had it become an entity not fully under the control of the state. Currently, he explained, the Internet could be a good tool for democracy, as it is hard for the government to control. At the same time, he made clear his opinion that a person would really have to know what he was looking for in order to get particularly insightful material, especially with regards to social and political affairs.

Professor Chomsky gave the Boston College community an excellent lecture on the path ahead of the US following the election of President Obama. He was bold in his opinions, and gave his audience plenty to think about over the course of this administration. Although some of his opinions might have been construed as surprising or even troubling to some, he tempered his points with some statements that got the audience laughing. The Boston College community was honored to host Professor Noam Chomsky and learn from his views.