Noam Chomsky

Avram Noam Chomsky was born on December 7, 1928, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Ashkenazi Jewish immigrant parents. His father, William, fled the Russian Empire (now Ukraine) in 1913 to avoid conscription, working in Baltimore sweatshops and Hebrew schools before becoming a principal and college faculty member. His mother, Elsie, emigrated from what is now Belarus.

Both spoke Yiddish natively, though it was not spoken at home; William spoke English with an accent, while Elsie used a New York City dialect. Chomsky’s only sibling, David, became a cardiologist. The brothers were raised Jewish, learned Hebrew, and discussed Zionist political theories, influenced by the Left Zionist writings of Ahad Ha'am. They faced antisemitism from local Irish and German communities.

Chomsky attended a Deweyite school and Philadelphia’s Central High School, excelling academically but disliking rigid teaching methods. His parents were center-left Democrats, but relatives in the garment workers’ union introduced him to socialism and far-left politics. He was shaped by his uncle and the Jewish leftists who debated current events at a New York City newsstand, and he often visited anarchist bookstores in the city.

Chomsky studied at the University of Pennsylvania and, during a postgraduate fellowship at Harvard, developed transformational grammar theory, earning his doctorate in 1955. That year, he began teaching at MIT. In 1957, his book Syntactic Structures reshaped linguistics.

From 1958 to 1959, he was a National Science Foundation fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. He created or co-created universal grammar, generative grammar, the Chomsky hierarchy, and the minimalist program. His work helped end linguistic behaviorism, particularly by criticizing B. F. Skinner.

In academia

Often called the father of modern linguistics, he is a major figure in analytic philosophy and a founder of cognitive science. He is now a laureate professor at the University of Arizona and an institute professor emeritus at MIT. Among the most cited living authors, he has written over 150 books on linguistics, war, and politics.

Anti-war activism and dissent: 1967–1975

Since the 1960s, Chomsky has been a leading voice on the American Left, consistently criticizing U.S. foreign policy, capitalism, and corporatocracy. He opposed U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War as imperialism, rising to national attention in 1967 with his essay “The Responsibility of Intellectuals.” He was arrested multiple times for activism and landed on President Nixon’s list of political opponents. His linguistics work sparked the linguistics wars in the 1960s. With Edward S. Herman, he developed the propaganda model of media criticism in Manufacturing Consent and worked to expose the Indonesian occupation of East Timor.

His defense of unconditional free speech, including for Holocaust denial, caused controversy in the 1980s Faurisson affair. His comments on the Cambodian and Bosnian genocides also drew criticism. After retiring from MIT, he continued activism, opposing the 2003 Iraq War and supporting the Occupy movement. An anti-Zionist, he considers Israel’s treatment of Palestinians worse than South African apartheid and criticizes U.S. support for Israel.

Chomsky is widely credited with sparking the cognitive revolution in the human sciences, providing a new framework for studying language and the mind. He remains a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy, capitalism, U.S. involvement in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and mass media. His ideas are highly influential in anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements.