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Video: Speech by Chomsky on academic freedom and the corporatization of universities

October 31, 2011
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On April 6, 2011 Chomsky gave a speech at the University of Toronto mainly focusing on the decline of academic freedom going and the coporatization of universities. In his speech he connects the issue with the larger picture of corporate reality. The recorded Q&A session after his speech is especially worth watching. Quote: There’s, furthermore, no way to measure the human and social costs of converting schools and universities into facilities that produce commodities for the job market, abandoning the traditional ideal of the universities: fostering creative and independent thought and inquiry, challenging perceived beliefs, exploring new horizons and forgetting…

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The Occupy Wall Street Movement

October 14, 2011
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John Nichols, writing in The Nation, provides a nice analysis of the Occupy Wall Street Movement. My only criticism is that Nichols seems to understand it as mostly an American movement. Wall Street may be, as he says, the right target for Americans to address, but Wall Street is ultimately just a part of something broader, something that has no geographic boundaries, namely,  global capitalism. Laurie Penny, speaking on Democracy Now, said that:  “What I found fascinating, being at Wall Street, is how similar it is to protests that I’ve seen in London over the past 6 months. And I’ve talked…

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