ROBSHAM - Noted linguist and critic of American foreign policy Noam Chomsky gave a speech at Robsham Theater Tuesday night, deriding the Undergraduate Government of Boston College as "authoritarian" and "brutal."
"By any measure, UGBC is one of the least transparent, most repressive student regimes in the greater Boston Area," he said.
Chomsky, the university professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, traveled with fellow Keebler elf and sociology professor Charles Derber on a tandem bicycle across the Charles River to campus.
Chomsky detailed a litany of human rights violations committed by UGBC, including arms support of Chechan rebels in South Ossetia, the stifling of public dissent in library "quiet zones," and generous subsidies to sweatshops in Lowell, Massachusetts.
"UGBC is not unique from other imperial governments in their deterrence of democracy, but the rhetoric they use to espouse democracy makes it difficult to detect their crimes," Chomsky explained.
"If you do a Google search, you'll find what I'm talking about," he added.
The event, which was sponsored by the Muslim Students Association, concluded with a spirited question and answer section, with handwritten queries picked by the MSA. Questions included "How evil is Israel?" and "Why is Israel so bad all the time?"
Chomsky stressed that students could have a meaningful role in changing their regime, but that the pervasive media biases in a relatively open society would make it a more difficult fight than that which their Egyptian peers waged against their dictator.
No comments:
Post a Comment