that Noam Chomsky would be invited to speak to a class of cadets at West Point academy? Not I, but it’s certainly a welcome surprise.
I haven’t actually watched the whole hour long video yet, since it’s in Real Video format and I don’t have that installed anywhere right now, but here’s an interesting short excerpt to whet the appetite: Noam answers the question posed by an audience member about the invasion of Iraq, and whether it was justified because of Saddam’s human rights record and/or his status as an “aggressor”.
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Don’t have time to watch, but don’t understand why you think this is surprising. I Can’t see why West Point wouldn’t be like any other top tier university filled with smart, curious students eager to listen and converse with a popular intellectual. I’m sure nobody at West Point is afraid of his analysis, regardless of how broken they think it is.
the clip is excellent.
I guess you’d need to know more about the military to know that they aren’t usually interested in giving a platform to people who vocally oppose their actions and/or policies. I suppose that whether that tendency is extended into West Point is a separate issue, and that is as it should be, so kudos to them (as I was trying to say in the original post, and not even as a backhanded compliment).
Don’t get too distracted by my surprise, though; that was a side point of the post. Write it off as my own bias if it makes you feel better, but don’t let that stop you from watching the clip, because it’s quite good, and it’s only five minutes.