Democracy Now! – Nov 23, 2022
Noam Chomsky remembers the life and legacy of longtime peace and civil rights activist, lawyer and author Staughton Lynd, who has died at the age of 92. Lynd faced professional blowback after he was a conscientious objector during the Korean War and an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War, and later supported U.S. soldiers who refused to fight in Iraq. We feature an extended interview excerpt from when he appeared on Democracy Now! in 2006 to discuss the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, his conscientious objector status and the 1993 Ohio prison uprising in Lucasville. Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream at https://democracynow.org Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET.
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[It would be hard to overstate the crucial importance of Professor Staughton Lynd on the Yale campus in the late 1960s and particularly for the members of the Class of 1968.
Professor Lynd stood out as a principled opponent to a war in which America had assumed the post-colonial legacy of Empire from the French in Indo-China. The Vietnam war was massively unpopular among the Yale student body — and all around the country. Along with the Yale Chaplin, The Reverend William Sloane Coffin, Jr., and a handful of other courageous professors including Robert Jay Lifton and Kai Erickson at Yale as well as Professor Noam Chomsky at MIT and Howard Zinn at Boston University — Professor Lynd came to represent the best highest example of what a principled scholar could achieve through devoted scholarship combined with a commitment to international social and political justice.
His death will be widely remembered and he presence deeply missed among all those who were fortunate meet and come to know him.]
See related:
- Staughton Lynd, Historian and Activist Turned Labor Lawyer, Dies at 92 – The New York Times
- God and War at Yale
- Splendor and Wisdom – The Reverend William Sloane Coffin, Jr. & the Yale Class of 1968
- The Yale Class of 1968 – Marked by Memories of Pain and Suffering
- Class Reunions – Yale 1968
- “Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be…” (Yogi Berra)
- Concluding remarks from the film – “Manufacturing Consent” (1992)
- Noam Chomsky – The Educational System
- Noam Chomsky: How Climate Change Became a ‘Liberal Hoax
- Noam Chomsky on the State-Corporate Complex: A Threat to Freedom and Survival
- Surviving the 21st Century by Professor Noam Chomsky
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