‘Arguably the Most Important Intellectual Alive’: The Global Significance of Noam Chomsky


DATE
Friday February 22, 2019
TIME
12:30 PM - 2:00 PM
COST
Free

Don’t miss this talk by investigative journalist David Barsamian on the iconic intellectual of our time, Noam Chomsky. Welcome remarks will be provided by MPPGA student, Atieh Yekta.

Light refreshments offered.

Stay afterwards to peruse the UBC Bookstore table!

Intellectuals play vital roles in society. Resisting the lure of power, intellectuals question the status quo and conventional thinking. The iconic intellectual of our time, Noam Chomsky, the outstanding linguist, media scholar, and radical foreign policy analyst, has written and talked extensively about the role of intellectuals in today’s society. For Chomsky, intellectuals, because of their privileged position, have a special responsibility to speak out against injustice, challenge power, confront hegemonic thinking and provide alternatives. This talk will elaborate on his views and also lay out how Chomsky himself embodies these values. Chomsky’s views and writings on the Middle East will be used as an example to understand his approach.

Bio: David Barsamian is an investigative journalist who has altered the independent media landscape, both with his weekly radio show Alternative Radio—now in its 33rd year—and his books with prominent radical intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky, Eqbal Ahmad, Howard Zinn, Tariq Ali, Richard Wolff, Arundhati Roy and Edward Said. His latest book with Noam Chomsky, the renowned linguist and political dissident, is Global Discontents: Conversations on the Rising Threats to Democracy. His book with Edward Said-Culture and Resistance-is being reissued this month by Haymarket Books with a new introduction by Barsamian. He is the winner of the Media Education Award, the ACLU’s Upton Sinclair Award for independent journalism, the Cultural Freedom Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation, and two Lifetime Achievement Awards, one each from the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center and the South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy in Vancouver.

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