Just as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev faces the beginning of his trial for the bombing of the Boston Marathon, Paris shakes from the assassination of French magazine satirists. “A New Era of Terrorism” has commenced, according to The New York Times. Governments emit loose talk of “fundamental values.” Patriotic slogans such as “Boston Strong” paper over global anxiety, as everyone prepares for further massacres and retributions. Welcome to the new world order. In this light, The Baffler magazine sponsored a neighborhood forum on the war on terror and the rule of law. Noam Chomsky, author of 9/11, and Kade Crockford, director of the ACLU of Massachusetts’ Technology for Liberty Project, for a discussion moderated by Baffler editor John Summers in the heart of Inman Square—the very neighborhood in which Dzhokhar and his alleged co-conspirator and older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, lived, worked, shopped, and worshipped among us. (Image: Jane Flavell Collins / AP)
+
BIO: Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky is a leading linguistic scientist and a longtime professor at MIT. His 1957 book Syntactic Structures outlined his theories of transformational generative grammar and made him a prominent and controversial figure in the field. Chomsky is also known as a political activist suspicious of big media, big business and big government. His books include Manufacturing Consent (1988) and Propaganda and the Public Mind (2001).
+
BIO: Kade Crockford
Kade Crockford is the director of the technology for liberty program at the ACLU of Massachusetts, where she quarterbacks the work challenging the growing surveillance state and defending core First and Fourth Amendment and due process rights. Kade is currently working on a long-term project to document and challenge the militarization and federalization of state and local law enforcement. The project focuses on the procurement and deployment of advanced surveillance and weapons systems, with the goal of bringing local police back under local control. >Follow Kade on Twitter
+
BIO: John Summers
Before taking on leadership of _The Baffler_, Summers had taught at Harvard University and Columbia University, where he was lecturer on American studies in 2008-2009. He also served as the editor of The Politics of Truth: Selected Writings of C. Wright Mills and is the author of Every Fury on Earth, a collection of his essays on history and politics. (Photo: Robert Birnbaum)
