Noam Chomsky delivers public lecture at King's

Political theorist and activist Noam Chomsky came to King’s on Monday 10 October to mark the launch of a new journal on state crime.

Noam Chomsky delivered a lecture on ‘Changing Contours of World Order’, followed by a question and answer session. The event was held to promote the new journal State Crime, based at the International State Crime Initiative (ISCI) at the School of Law.

Noam Chomsky, who is Institute Professor of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is internationally recognised as one of the most critically engaged public intellectuals alive today. He is a well-known critic of American foreign policy and global capitalism.

The new journal will be an outlet for research into state crime, a concept that includes human rights abuses committed by states as well as international criminal behaviour. It is the first journal dedicated to state crime scholarship, and will be published twice yearly from April 2012.

Chomsky’s lecture was followed by a photo exhibition by New York based Turkish photo journalist Yusuf Sayman. The images featured African refugees taking shelter in Tunisia following the uprising in Libya earlier this year. His work has been featured by the ISCI and in US media outlets.

The event was organised by Professor Penny Green from the School of Law, who is a founding member of the ISCI. She was recently awarded an £830,000 ESRC grant to research resistance to state violence in several developing nations.

She said: ‘It was a great privilege to have had Noam Chomsky deliver the ISCI’s second Annual Lecture and launch the new journal State Crime here at King’s.'

'His work has inspired millions to challenge the prevailing order and expose the vested state and corporate interests which sustain violent and corrupt governments.'

‘ISCI is dedicated to the same goals through a programme of research and initiatives designed to connect state crime scholarship with activism.’