Responsible academics

The Responsibility of Intellectuals: Reflections by Noam Chomsky and others after 50 years by Nicholas Allott, Chris Knight & Neil Smith ISBN: 9781787355514, paperback, London: University College London Press (free PDF download from www.uclpress.co.uk), 144 pp., 2019.

Reviewed by Thomas Klikauer

In 1967, the distinguished MIT linguist Noam Chomsky published an essay on The Responsibility of Intellectuals in the New York Review of Books (Chomsky, 1967). Nicholas Allott, Chris Knight and Neil Smith’s book presents eight chapters that reflect on Chomsky’s original essay. In the preface, the editors’ note that ‘by 2004, even the New York Times – not the greatest fan of Chomsky’s political writings – had to admit that if book sales are any standard to go by, he may be the most widely read American voice on foreign policy on the planet today’ (preface, p. x). (Chomsky’s key work – Syntactic Structures (1957) – is on Martin SeymourSmith’s list of the 100 most influential books ever written (thegreatestbooks.org)).

Perhaps Chomsky’s vital thought in his 1967 essay is that ‘it is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies’ (p. 1). At many universities, we find academics, but one also finds intellectuals. Some might like to distinguish between an academic – a teacher at a university or institute of higher education – and an intellectual – a person possessing a highly developed intellect. These are by no means synonymous. The latter are ‘people to whom [we] refer as intellectuals’ (p. 2). To illuminate the academicsvs.-intellectual distinction, one might think of an academic as someone who teaches a university class as demanded by the managerialists placed above her or him, as someone who publishes diligently in so-called A-star-top-ranked journals for reasons of ‘impact fetishism’ and promotion (Fleck, 2013). Perhaps one of the clearest expressions of the academic vs. intellectual difference is Henry Giroux’ (2017) graduation address at UWS Hamilton. Another dividing line between academic and intellectual might be detected in this (p. 3):

In the face of the temptation not to make a fuss, not to rock the boat and not to endanger one’s livelihood, it is almost always easier to serve the interests of the powerful, or to say and do nothing, than it is to stand up for what is right by speaking out.

vol. 62, no. 1, 2020 A similar thought had been expressed by Upton Sinclair 30 years before Chomsky. Reflecting the gendered realities of the day, Sinclair said, ‘it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!’ (Sinclair, 1935). In almost any of the 15,000 business schools globally one can find examples of Sinclair’s thought. ‘Stand up for what is right’ has a long history. Conceivably, it all started with Socrates’ trial (Nails 2018). Much later, it was none other than Italian natural philosopher, astronomer and mathematician Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) who made a fuss.

Galilei did not give in to the Catholic Church even when shown the instruments of torture. Of course, it would have been by far easier to serve the interests of the powerful. Instead, Galilei ‘stood up for what is right’ even when this meant not being able to publish any longer. His daughter Suor Maria Celeste carried on his work. Unaware of Galilei and Maria’s achievement, many of today’s academics say and do nothing while focusing on the next 7,500-word journal article boosting journal-science. They join the academic rat race never realising that even when they win the rat race, the winner is still a rat. From PhD to comfortable retirement, they achieve the rather dubious grandeur of A-Star publications – euphemistically known as having academic standing and having a track record – rewarded by lush titles on their doors and business cards, hefty perks and salaries. Slowly they have been wheeled into becoming what Baritz (1960) called the Servants of Power seven years prior to Chomsky’s seminal essay.

These academics are busy. They hardly ever have a moment for reflective thought – never mind self-reflection. They console themselves with hallucinations like ‘there’s no need for intellectuals in general to speak the truth and to expose lies, as mainstream journalists will do it anyway’ (p. 7). In times of fake news and ‘digital fascism’ (Fielitz & Marcks, 2019), the general public almost as much as academics has simply been Outfoxed (Greenwald, 2004). A gigantic and highly manipulative media apparatus ensures as much

(Klikauer, 2019a). One might argue that those who engage with the public (‘intellectuals’) might be less naïve about the media and politics compared to ‘technocratic’ academics (p. 8). Swayed by positivism, systems theory, non-critical theories, easy-to-understand models and other trimmings of the nonintellectual smorgasbord, many diligent academics see the world from within unable to ascertain the pathologies of our current life from the outside. The towering achievement appears when business school professors advocate thinking outside the box and then deliver a paper at a conference or write a paper that does the exact opposite: they think inside the box in an almost Janis-like self-enslavement ( Janis, 1985) lacking what Baillargeon (2007) has described as Intellectual Self-Defense – Find your inner Chomsky. Many of these academics have been duped by common hallucinations such as making a contribution and contributing to society, however insignificant their contributions are.

Many might not even have recognised that ‘the scope of academic freedom has declined significantly in the last few decades’ (p. 9). Today, the neoliberal academic apparatus – running under the ideological hegemony of Managerialism – has fine-tuned its instruments of deception. Seamlessly, it engineers compliance and manufactures consent. There is no longer any need to persecute an outstanding intellectual mind of the standing of a Karl Marx. He escaped to England. There is no longer a need to force Adorno into exile (Klikauer, 2015) and Walter Benjamin into suicide (Klikauer, 2016a). Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn no longer needs to be in the Gulag. Today, corporate mass media have established their global dominance so thoroughly that fighting those few intellectuals, those who become a minor irritation to the system once in a while, is no longer needed. When they still put up a fight, the power of corporate mass media puts them in their place (Oreskes & Conway, 2010). Things have become worse from the days of Chomsky’s essay (1967). Chomsky’s essay ‘dealt almost exclusively with governments, but one needs now increasingly to look at companies and other non-state actors such as the public relations industry and the business community more generally’ (p. 11). With a diminishing state under neoliberalism’s ideological onslaught, corporate PR has taken over. Corporate media and PR have made it possible for many to believe Toxic Sludge is Good For You (Stauber & Rampton, 1995) just as Trump is good for you and so is Boris Johnson, Bolsonaro and many others.

According to Wallace-Wells (2017), ‘you should have pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will…only the latter, Chomsky writes, protects you from the despair’ (p. 13). There is a critical need for this as Orwellian Newspeak holds sway at the ‘PR-university’ (Cronin, 2016) and elsewhere. The rise of managerial ‘bullshit talk’ (Klikauer, 2019b) is designed ‘to make it impossible to talk, and possibly even think, about ideas that challenge the established order’ (p. 14). Trapped in

Responsible academics Reviewed by Thomas Klikauer the ideological echo chamber of positivist academia, hunting for the next research grant and submitting an application to the next impact and research competition your university runs, many academics are overworked and insulated from the realities of capitalism’s pathologies. In other words, ‘if you aren’t a member of the community being served the lies, you’re quite likely never to know that they are in circulation’ (p. 17). The neoliberal university makes sure that you do not realise the lies – and more importantly – the deceptions you are served by the managerialists at your own university.

Those hard-working academics hammering out one grant application after the other, those who win shiny awards handed out generously by university managerialists and professional associations will almost never realise that ‘activists are the people who have created the rights that we enjoy’ (p. 19). As a consequence of not understanding the history of struggles even at universities, there has been a decline in trade union membership among academics. Surprisingly, this comes at a time of escalating short-term contracts and the McDonaldisation of higher education (Ritzer, 2018; Bhattacharya 2019). Slowly, many intellectuals are replaced by faithful apparatchiks oiling the managerialist machine of higher education. The day of The Last Professor (Donoghue, 2008) and perhaps even the last intellectuals is upon us. ‘Intellectuals [are] those who have the ability to reflect, comment and propose solutions…to present alternative narratives and other perspectives’ (p. 27) Instead of this, we see ‘that many…promote, or turn a blind eye, to the oppressions of the establishment [including] the establishment’s control over university academics’ (p. 27).

Given the fact that ‘intellectuals…have the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest’ (p. 32), those who call themselves intellectuals should keep this fact in mind. While they have the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth, many do not. Still, there are those who enable intellectuals to have the leisure to engage in intellectual debates unveiling the distortions of the powerful: those non-intellectuals who work in factories and offices. They are the ones who are manipulated day-in-and-out by mass media (Coban, 2018). They are the ones who are deliberately depoliticised (cf. Neuman 2017, p. 624). Indeed, ‘most voters pay little attention to politics [which goes hand in hand with the fact that] human reasoning is prone to a wide variety of biases’ (p. 35) – a fact that has been well-known since the seminal work of Solomon Asch (1955).

Worse than being manipulated might be the fact that ‘one of the things we know from social psychology is when people feel threatened, they can’t change, they can’t listen’ (p. 41). This works well inside society as well as inside universities. Inside society, it is the other, the refugee and

the migrant that are presented as a threat. In the words of US President Trump ‘Mexicans are animals…these aren’t people…they’re rapists’ (usatoday.com 16 May 2018). Inside universities, it is the managerialists armed with KPIs, casualisation, performance management (Klikauer, 2017), etc. who threaten intellectuals and academics, consciously or unconsciously (Gove, 2015).

This has been made part and parcel of today’s managerialist university. Indeed, ‘universities are now expected to function as corporations…the notion of a democratic self-governing community has vanished after an onslaught of macho corporate governance culture, including the ludicrously high levels of remuneration for executives’ (p. 72). The days can’t be far off when the first president or vice-chancellor of a university is dubbed ‘CEO’ with a multimillion dollar salary riding in a corporate car driven by a chauffeur or flying in a private jet while half of their (!) staff are on short-term contracts as their (!) university generates substantial revenues from staff while Selling Students Short as Richard Hil has called it in his exquisite book (Hil, 2015; cf. Klikauer, 2016b). Inside as well as outside of universities, ‘our prime concern should be the crimes for which we share responsibility and that we can do something about, that we can mitigate or terminate’ (p. 79). This is the enduring task of those who call themselves intellectuals. Chomsky himself writes in this book dedicated to him,

The press often helps by suppressing (or even deriding) the facts. For example, the Economist assures us that the ‘grim, mirthless’ Bernie Sanders with his ‘crotchety-great-uncle charisma’ is an ‘indulgence’ that Democrats can ‘ill afford’, and that fortunately, silly season ‘has probably passed’. After all, we are instructed, his main ideas ‘have little support within [the Democratic] party, let alone America’: only the support of 75 per cent of Democrats, 59 per cent of the general public (national health care, ‘Medicare-for-all’) and of 80 per cent of Clinton voters, 45 per cent of Trump voters (tuition-free college). Facts that readers are spared (p. 82).

This is How Propaganda Works (Stanley, 2015). The very same point is made by Chomsky in a chapter written by Noam Chomsky himself in the book being reviewed here. Chomsky says that the ‘concentration of wealth leads to increased concentration of political power and increased marginalisation of the public’ (p. 83). Almost every social and economic indicator tells us that we are moving rather rapidly towards an ever-greater gap between the haves and the havenots which will lead to all the expected pathologies (Hanauer, 2014). Highlighting these is the task of intellectuals. On our responsibility, Chomsky says in his own chapter in the book the following: ‘so what’s the responsibility of everyone? Well, to try to avert this catastrophe’ (p. 105). Perhaps the most impending catastrophe is our collective movement towards

vol. 62, no. 1, 2020 an Uninhabitable Earth (Wallace-Wells, 2017) despite Greta Thunberg’s best efforts (Thunberg, 2018).

Far too few have understood the true magnitude of what we are facing. We carry on giving lectures, marking exam papers, supervising PhDs and publish articles in A-star journal that are rather inconsequential. At the same time, we face the 6th mass extinction on earth (Ceballos et al., 2015). Trust in the democratic process will not help. As Chomsky said, ‘political scientists have shown you can predict the outcome of an election with remarkable precision simply by looking at campaign spending’ (p. 109). Democracy has been turned into a well-financed election spectacle in which not the one with the best idea is the winner but the one with the biggest mouth – Trump & Co. This is nothing new. We have known this since 1835 (Tocqueville, 1835) and we still trust in democracy and elections. Finally, Chomsky notes,

‘in Germany, the Alternative for Germany, the right-wing alternative…I’m old enough to remember listening to Hitler’s speeches over the radio in the 1930s, not understanding the words as a child, but couldn’t miss the thrust and the massive popular support, and so on. That’s threatening’.

In Germany and elsewhere, right-wing populism is on the march, except that in Germany it is not just populism, but outright neo-Nazism that is on the rise (Klikauer, 2018). While I am not ‘old enough to hear Hitler’s speeches in 1930s’ (as Chomsky did), unlike Chomsky, I do understand what Hitler meant when shouting, Die Vernichtung der jüdische Rasse in Europa – the eradication of the Jewish race in Europe (see youtube.com/watch?v=11fl8AykFqo).

Indeed, ‘that’s threatening’ (Chomsky). Very threatening, indeed. Even more so when one sees 8,000 neo-Nazis marching in the East German city of Chemnitz in 2018, displaying all the fascist trimmings one can imagine: the hunting of foreigners, Hitler salutes, thug violence and an attack on a Jewish restaurant (cnn.com, 29th Aug. 2018). This is flanked by neo-Nazis inside German parliaments as well as the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) leadership, and its adjacent apparatchiks. In English, some might say ‘ f***ing disgrace’. Not so long ago, these men were hard-core neo Nazis and now they are AfD apparatchiks generously paid for through federal taxes. Not surprisingly, anti-semitism is on the rise in Germany once again. Perhaps ‘the formative stages of fascism are with us once again’ (Rohde, 2019).

While the book does not have a conclusion telling readers what we can learn from all this it does close with Noam Chomsky saying ‘an intellectual presupposes a certain amount of privilege. Privilege confers obligations and responsibility, automatically’ (p. 119). Intellectuals and perhaps even academics should keep this in mind. These obligations and responsibilities should be directed toward ending suffering as defined by what the Latin-American ethics philosopher

Enrique Dussel calls the community of victims (Klikauer, 2014). Ending suffering is the ethical and intellectual duty of those who call themselves intellectuals.

Thomas Klikauer is the author of Managerialism (Palgrave MacMillan. 2013) and 450 other publications. He teaches PhD and MBA students at the Sydney Graduate School of Management, Western Sydney University, NSW, Australia. Contact: t.klikauer@westernsydney.edu.au

References

Asch, S. E. (1955). Opinions and Social Pressure, Scientific American, 193(5):31-35. Bhattacharya, D. (eds.) (2019). The Idea of the University: Histories and Contexts, London: Routledge. Baillargeon, N. (2007). A Short Course in Intellectual Self-Defense – Find your inner Chomsky, Toronto: Seven Stories Press. Baritz, L. (1960). The Servants of Power. A History of the Use of Social Science in American Industry, Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. Ceballos, G., Ehrlich, P. R., Barnosky, A. D., García, A., Pringle, R. M. & Palmer, T. M. (2015). Accelerated modern human–induced species losses: Entering the sixth mass extinction, Science advances, 1(5): page: e1400253 (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1400253). Chomsky, N. (1957). Syntactic Structures, The Hague: Mouton Press. Chomsky, N. (1967). The Responsibility of the Intellectual, New York: New York Review of Books. Retrieved from https://chomsky. info/19670223/. Coban, S. (ed.) (2018). Media, ideology and hegemony, Leiden: Brill. Cronin, A. M. (2016). Reputational capital in ‘the PR University’: public relations and market rationalities, Journal of Cultural Economy, 9(4):396-409. Donoghue, F. (2008). The last professors: the twilight of the humanities in the corporate university and the fate of the humanities, New York: Fordham University Press. Fielitz, M. & Marcks, H. (2019). Digital Fascism: Challenges for the Open Society in Times of Social Media (Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies Working Paper. Retrieved from https://crws.berkeley.edu/ Fleck, C. (2013). The impact factor fetishism, European Journal of Sociology, 54(2): 327-356. Giroux, H. (2017). UWS Hamilton Graduation. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eFTbsbYlEA, 4 July 2017). Greenwald, R. (2004). Outfoxed, DVD-Documentary, Culver City: Brave New Films Retrieved from http://www.bravenewfilms.org/ Gove, J. (2015). Stefan Grimm inquest: new policies may not have prevented suicide. Times Highere Education, Retrieved from timeshighereducation.com, 9 April 2015. Hanauer, N. (2014). Beware Fellow Plutocrats, the Pitchforks Are Coming. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com, 12 August 2014. Hil, R. (2015). Selling Students Short. Sydney, Allen & Unwin. Janis, I. L. (1985). Victims of Groupthinking, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Press. Klikauer, T. (2014). Social Justice and the Ethics of Resistance, Social Justice Review, 27(4):518-525. Klikauer, T. (2015). Adorno, Auschwitz, and Autonomy, Radical Philosophy Review, 18(2):331-336. Klikauer, T. (2016a). Radio Benjamin, Working USA, 19(2):269-278. Klikauer, T. (2016b). Selling Students Short, Management Learning, 47(5):629-633. Klikauer, T. (2017). Eight fatal flaws of performance management, Management Learning, 48(4):492-497. Klikauer, T. (2018). Inside Germany’s New Crypto-Nazi Party – an AfD Dissident’s Report, Tikkun Magazine. Retrieved from https:// www.tikkun.org/ 28h September 2018. Klikauer, T. (2019a). Propaganda and Politics in the USA, UK and Australia, Counterpunch. Retrieved from www.counterpunch.org, 24 September 2019. Klikauer, T. (2019b.) Management Bullshit, Australian Universities’ Review, 61(1):86-92. Nails, D. (2018). Socrates. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/ entries/socrates/, 6 February 2018. Neuman, F. (2017). Anxiety and Politics, TripleC (doi.org/10.31269/ triplec.v15i2.901), 15(2):624. Oreskes, N. & Conway, E. M. (2010). Merchants of doubt: how a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming, New York: Bloomsbury Press. Ritzer, G. (2018). The McDonaldization of Society – into the Digital Age, (9th ed.), London: Sage. Rohde, S. (2019). Echoes of Fascism, LA Review of Books, https:// lareviewofbooks.org/article/echoes-of-fascism/, accessed: 5th October 2019. Sinclair, U. (1935). How I got licked and why, London: T. W. Laurie (reprinted by University of California Press, 1994). Stanley, J. (2015). How propaganda works, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Stauber, J. C. & Rampton, S. (1995). Toxic sludge is good for you: lies, damn lies, and the public relations industry, Monroe: Common Courage Press. Thunberg, G. 2018. The Disarming Case to Act Right Now on Climate Change. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/greta_thunberg_ the_disarming_case_to_act_right_now_on_climate?language=en Tocqueville, A. (1835). De la démocratie en Amérique – Democracy in America (transl. by Henry Reeve), London: Saunders & Otley. Wallace-Wells, D. (2017). The Uninhabitable Earth. NY Magazine, retrieved from http://nymag.com/, 9 July 2017.

Save when booking your holiday this summer. Discover the exclusive offers available through your NEW benefits website.

Including:

Discounted hotel accommodation in over 70, 000 locations worldwide

Specially negotiated travel insurance premiums for NTEU members

Exclusive corporate rates and excess on popular car hire brands

For more information, email info@memberadvantage.com.au or call 1300 853 352. Terms and conditions apply.

Since 1958, the Australian Universities’ Review has been encouraging debate and discussion about issues in higher education and its contribution to Australian public life.

Want to receive your own copy of Australian Universities’ Review (AUR)?

AUR is published by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) twice a year. NTEU members are entitled to a free subscription. However, this subscription is on an opt-in basis, so you need to let us know. If you are an NTEU member and would like to receive your own copy of AUR, send us an email at aur@nteu.org.au.

Subscription rates for non-members are available at www.aur.org.au.

Love UniSuper? Your family can too!

We’re passionate about helping our members save for an exceptional retirement. And now your family can join our award-winning* fund too.

A UniSuper Personal Account offers your family great value for money with a range of investment options, low fees, excellent service, flexible insurance and a national financial advice team.

See what’s to love at unisuper.com.au/personal.

Prepared by UniSuper Management Pty Ltd (ABN 91 006 961 799, AFSL 235907) on behalf of UniSuper Limited (ABN 54 006 027 121, AFSL 492806) the trustee of UniSuper (ABN 91 385 943 850). This information is of a general nature only. Before making any decision in relation to your UniSuper membership, you should consider your personal circumstances, the relevant product disclosure statement for your membership category and whether to consult a qualified financial adviser. *SuperRatings awarded UniSuper 2019 Fund of the Year. Chant West named UniSuper 2019 Fund of the Year. Visit unisuper.com.au/awards for more information.