Description: Michel DeGraff introduces this session, in which Noam Chomsky answers student questions about how to bridge knowledge into action in the world, to try to make it better.
Instructors: Noam Chomsky and Michel DeGraff
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MICHEL DEGRAFF: I don't want to make anyone jealous who came before, but I think we can say pretty safely that we saved one of the best for last, right? I won't say the best. OK? All right.
So as you can see, throughout the course we looked at these issues about how language, race, ethnicity, gender, how they can be used to create various hierarchies. And as you can see now after the semester, these are tools, really. They're not inherently part of who we are, but they are tools that various pools of power use to keep control, to create hierarchies.
And I think last week, you guys you had a very good discussion with Dr. Aleman about how sometimes these hierarchies can be internalized. And there was a very good discussion, as I can tell, from the video that she took for me about how you, yourself, we need to do some work inside of us to go beyond these threats that these terror attacks impose on us.
So we went very micro. So we went very macro, then went micro. And today, with my friend and colleague, Noam Chomsky, we're going to go my macro again.
But I guess you've read the papers. I read the papers. And I must say, Noam, I was very disturbed by what I read. But the fact is that those are the data.
So this is MIT. We are very much involved in trying to understand knowledge. And many of you throughout the semester made a case that we have all this knowledge here at MIT. But often, this knowledge does not translate into action into the real world. And in a way, I think with Noam's entire life, we have an example of how that can happen. How we can take very abstract, technical knowledge and make it available to the world and try to make it better. And the theme of this course throughout was how to build bridges, how to make change and build bridges.
So we hope that with Noam today, we'll get a clear sense of how that can happen. And perhaps, how we might, with some luck, save the world, right?
NOAM CHOMSKY: I think the best way to proceed is-- in a court seminar is for you to say what you're interested in. I'll see if I have some way of reacting to it.
Lots of things I could talk about.
I mean, one thing we could talk about related is right in the headlines. So there are things which is an opening for things we can do. That's the plan that was just made public yesterday to deport Haitians back to Haiti from Boston. That's a very live issue. A lot of lives depend on it. We can do something about it right here if we want.
It turns out-- I didn't know this-- that the Haitian Ambassador, Michel just told me, who is pleading with the government not to carry out this onerous and destructive act, is actually a former MIT student, who wrote about these topics in his thesis. So that's one of many things that could be discussed.
