Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship

Noam Chomsky’s classic critique of the ideology of liberalism that justified American imperialist foreign policy during the 1960s—a critique that remains relevant to this day “Provocative . . . Chomsky establishes the premise that the U.S. presence in Southeast Asia was little more than updated imperialism.” — Publishers Weekly Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship is Noam Chomsky’s powerful indictment of a liberal intelligentsia that provided self-serving arguments for war in Vietnam, legitimizing U.S. commitment to autocratic rule, intervention in Asia and, ultimately, the “pacification” of millions. As America today continues to engage in “regime change” in the Middle East and South America and elsewhere in the world, Chomsky’s words remain prophetic. Included here is Chomsky’s classic analysis of the Spanish Civil War as a revolutionary war from below, laying bare scholarly elites’ hostility to mass movements and social change. This hostility, and the technocratic neoliberalism birthed in its wake, reveals not objectivity, but its opposite—the use of ideology to mask self-interest and obeisance to power. Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship is a crucial contribution to our age, and an indispensable lens through which to consider mainstream justifications for militarism today.