# The Responsibility of Intellectuals Link:: [The Responsibility of Intellectuals](https://amzn.to/3QXutgF) By:: [[Noam Chomsky]] Medium:: [[Book]] > [!about] Summary from the Source > As a nineteen-year-old undergraduate in 1947, Noam Chomsky was deeply affected by articles about the responsibility of intellectuals written by Dwight Macdonald, an editor of Partisan Review and then of [[Politics]]. Twenty years later, as the Vietnam War was escalating, Chomsky turned to the question himself, noting that “intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments” and to analyze their “often hidden intentions.” > > Originally published in the New York Review of Books, Chomsky’s essay eviscerated the “hypocritical moralism of the past” (such as when Woodrow Wilson set out to teach Latin Americans “the art of good [[government]]”) and exposed the destructive [[policies]] in Vietnam and the role of intellectuals in justifying them. > > Chomsky then turns to the “war on terror” and “enhanced interrogation” of the Bush years in “The Responsibility of Intellectuals Redux,” an essay written on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. As relevant now as it was in 1967, The Responsibility of Intellectuals reminds us that “privilege yields opportunity and opportunity confers responsibilities.” > > [Summary Reference](https://www.amazon.com/Responsibility-Intellectuals-Noam-Chomsky-ebook/dp/B01NAZIA6Z) ## Notes