Editing Faurisson affair (section)

==Chomsky's biographers on the Faurisson affair==

Chomsky's biographers have expressed a range of views on the Faurisson affair. In ''Chomsky: Ideas and ideals'', [[Neil Smith (linguist)|Neil Smith]] writes: 'Chomsky should perhaps have foreseen the negative effect of his activity and refrained from writing the way he did. Perhaps, but on balance perhaps not. Even had he seen the furore which would erupt and the degree that would ensue, the moral doctrine of defending freedom of speech is probably higher.'<ref>Neil Smith (1999). ''Chomsky: Ideas and ideals''. Cambridge University Press. p. 328.</ref>

In ''[[Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent]]'', [[Robert Barsky]] says 'Chomsky's tactics may not always be the most appropriate in light of the causes that he supports but the values transmitted by his work are, according to virtually any reasonable measure, consistent with those of the libertarians.' Barsky also points out that although the Faurisson affair 'has had a harmful and lasting effect on Chomsky ... Chomsky has refused to back down on the issue, even refusing to admit a momentary lack of judgment.'<ref>Robert Barsky, (1997). ''[[Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent]]''. [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT Press]]. pp. 183-5. See also: Robert Barsky (2007). ''The Chomsky Effect: A radical works beyond the ivory tower''. MIT Press. Chapter 2.</ref>

Two other biographers, [[Milan Rai]] and [[Chris Knight (anthropologist)|Chris Knight]], both refer to the Faurisson affair in the context of Chomsky's uncompromising support for academic freedom for everyone including '[[War crime|war criminals]]'. In ''Chomsky's Politics'', Milan Rai quotes Chomsky saying that he even 'supported the rights of American war criminals not only to speak and teach but also to conduct their research, on grounds of academic freedom, at a time when their work was being used to murder and destroy.'<ref>Rai, M. 1995. ''Chomsky’s Politics''. London and New York: Verso., p. 130-1.</ref>

In ''Decoding Chomsky'', Chris Knight refers to Chomsky's 1969 threat to 'protest publicly' if fellow [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]] (MIT) academic [[Walt Whitman Rostow]] was denied a position at the university. Chomsky certainly considered Rostow, a prime architect of the [[Vietnam War]], as a 'war criminal' but insisted that MIT must stick to its principles of academic freedom - principles expressed when MIT's President [[Howard Wesley Johnson]] stated that the university should be a 'refuge from the censor, where any individual can pursue truth as he sees it, without any interference.'<ref>Chris Knight (2016). ''Decoding Chomsky; Science and revolutionary politics''. Yale University Press. pp. 38-9.</ref> Johnson's motivation for talking about academic freedom at this time of anti-war student unrest was largely to prevent any interference with MIT's various military-funded research laboratories. But, Knight claims, Chomsky also believed he had to extend the principle of academic freedom to unusual lengths because any 'less libertarian policy might have undermined his own conflicted position as an anti-war campaigner working in a laboratory funded by the US military.' Knight concludes that Chomsky's subsequent position on Faurisson 'did not imply any sympathy towards Holocaust denial. It was simply a logical extension of a principle common to all Western universities – one which his management at MIT felt obliged to uphold with special tenacity in view of what its own researchers were doing.'<ref>{{cite web|title=Chomsky at MIT: Between the war scientists and the anti-war students|url=https://libcom.org/history/chomsky-mit-between-war-scientists-anti-war-students-chris-knight|author=Chris Knight }}; Knight 2016, p. 38.</ref>

[[Paul Berman]], writing in ''[[Tablet (magazine)|Tablet]]'' in 2018, says that Chomsky's biographers have largely accepted his claim that his defense of Faurisson was entirely on free speech grounds, and that Chomsky did not defend Faurisson's actual positions or arguments. Berman, however, argues that Chomsky did in fact defend Faurisson substantively. Berman says that Chomsky adopted an "oddly respectful tone toward Faurisson" and that he "left the clear implication that Faurisson is a scientific-minded researcher, with conclusions or findings that ought to be accorded the kind of respect that is accorded to any authentically scientific researcher."<ref name="Tablet Magazine 2018">{{cite web | title=How the Grand Theorist of Holocaust Denial Robert Faurisson and the OId Moles Suckered Noam Chomsky Into a Web of Lies | website=Tablet Magazine | date=2018-04-26 | url=https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/robert-faurisson-holocaust-denial | access-date=2021-03-05}}</ref>