Intercept Editor-in-Chief Betsy Reed moderated a discussion between Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg on the topic of nuclear policy and war. Chomsky, a laureate professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona, and Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower and author of “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner,” appeared onstage together for the first time.
Noam Chomsky (born on December 7, 1928, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historical essayist, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is a Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona and an Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and is the author of more than 150 books. He has written and lectured widely on linguistics, philosophy, intellectual history, contemporary issues, and particularly international affairs and U.S. foreign policy. Chomsky has been a writer for Z projects since their earliest inception, and is a tireless supporter of our operations.
Daniel Ellsberg was born in Chicago in 1931. In 1959, Ellsberg became a strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation and a consultant to the Defense Department and the White House. Ellsberg worked on the top-secret McNamara study, U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam, 1945-68, which later came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. In 1969, he photocopied the 7,000-page study and gave it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In 1971 he gave it to the New York Times, the Washington Post and 17 other newspapers. Since the end of the Vietnam War, Ellsberg has been a lecturer, scholar, writer and activist on the dangers of the nuclear era, wrongful U.S. interventions and the urgent need for patriotic whistleblowing. He was awarded the 2006 Right Livelihood Award in Stockholm, Sweden “…for putting peace and truth first, at considerable personal risk, and dedicating his life to inspiring others to follow his example.” Ellsberg is the author of four books: The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner (2017); Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (2002); Risk, Ambiguity and Decision (2001); and Papers on the War (1971). He is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst; a Distinguished Researcher at UMass Amherst’s W.E.B. Du Bois Library; and a Senior Fellow of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
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