September 22, 2011 - MIT Wong Auditorium - In 1967, as the Vietnam War escalated, Noam Chomsky penned The Responsibility of Intellectuals, a stunning rebuke to scientists and scholars for their subservience to political power. Today we face a similar array of crises, from wars to escalating debt. What are the obligations of intellectuals in this day and age? Introduced by Joshua Cohen. Ideas Matter, a joint project of Boston Review and MIT’s Political Science Department, is a lecture series that brings our writers together with other experts and practitioners for substantive debate on the challenges of our times. The series, free and open to the public, will offer four events in the 2011–12 academic year. bostonreview.net/ideasmatter