The Responsibility of Intellectuals in the Age of Fascism and Genocide

The Responsibility of Intellectuals in the Age of Fascism and Genocide is Boston Review’s 50th anniversary issue. This milestone issue features many of our longtime contributors, including Robin D. G. Kelley, Vivian Gornick, and Elaine Scarry, and celebrates classics from our archive.  In this issue, historian and Boston Review contributing editor Robin D. G. Kelley revisits Noam Chomsky’s landmark 1967 essay, “The Responsibility of Intellectuals,” published near the height of the Vietnam War. The essay’s dissident injunction—that those in privileged positions have a duty to “speak the truth and expose lies”—remains a powerful call to conscience, Kelley argues, but the anti-fascist and anti-colonial struggles of even earlier decades reveal its limits, and they show how to refuse and resist complicity in our own age of fascism and genocide. Political philosopher Martin O’Neill, Palestinian human rights lawyer Jennifer Zacharia, and historian David Waldstreicher expand on what this moment requires—of intellectuals, of journalists, and of us all.

Also in the issue, Vivian Gornick reviews Shulamith Firestone’s Airless Spaces, Elaine Scarry challenges the wisdom that Plato banished the poets, Brandon M. Terry interviews political scientist Cathy Cohen about social movements and the future of Black politics, Joelle M. Abi-Rached exposes the contradictions of the liberal international order over Gaza, Samuel Hayim Brody reviews three memoirs on the Arab Jewish world destroyed by colonialism, David Austin Walsh explains what Zohran Mamdani’s triumph means for the future of the Democratic Party, and Sandeep Vaheesan looks to the New Deal to assess the “abundance” agenda.

Plus, seven writers reflect on notable essays from our archive in a special anniversary feature:

• Susan Faludi on Vivian Gornick and anti-feminism
• Naomi Klein on William Callison + Quinn Slobodian and the global right
• Jay Caspian Kang on Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò and identity politics
• Ryu Spaeth on Merve Emre and the personal essay
• Lea Ypi on Joseph Carens and amnesty
• Nathan J. Robinson on Noam Chomsky and U.S. foreign policy
• Rick Perlstein on Elaine Scarry and democracy after 9/11