Noam Chomsky

Website:     https://chomsky.info/


Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, logician, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes described as "the father of modern linguistics,"[20][21][22] Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy, and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He has spent most of his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT), where he is Institute Professor Emeritus, and is the author of over 100 books, primarily on politics and linguistics. Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.
Born to a middle-class Ashkenazi Jewish family in Philadelphia, Chomsky developed an early interest in anarchism from alternative bookstores in New York City. At the age of sixteen he began studies at the University of Pennsylvania, taking courses in linguistics, mathematics, and philosophy. He married fellow linguist Carol Schatz in 1949. From 1951 to 1955 he was appointed to Harvard University's Society of Fellows, where he developed the theory of transformational grammar for which he was awarded his doctorate in 1955. That year he began teaching at MIT, in 1957 emerging as a significant figure in the field of linguistics for his landmark work Syntactic Structures, which laid the basis for the scientific study of language, while from 1958 to 1959 he was a National Science Foundation fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. He is credited as the creator or co-creator of the universal grammar theory, the generative grammar theory, the Chomsky hierarchy, and the minimalist program. Chomsky also played a pivotal role in the decline of behaviorism, being particularly critical of the work of B. F. Skinner.
An outspoken opponent of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, which he saw as an act of American imperialism, in 1967 Chomsky attracted widespread public attention for his anti-war essay "The Responsibility of Intellectuals." Becoming associated with the New Left, he was arrested multiple times for his activism and earned a place on President Richard Nixon's Enemies List. While expanding his work in linguistics over subsequent decades, he also became involved in the Linguistics Wars. In collaboration with Edward S. Herman, Chomsky later developed the propaganda model of media criticism and helped to expose the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. However, his defense of unconditional freedom of speech – including that of Holocaust denial – generated significant controversy in what came to be known as the Faurisson Affair of the early 1980s. Following his retirement from active teaching, he has continued his vocal public activism, for instance opposing the U.S.-led War on Terror and supporting the Occupy movement.

Chomsky's work has been highly influential in a wide array of academic fields, with Chomsky himself being one of the most cited scholars in academic citation indices. In addition to his continued scholarly research, he remains a leading critic of United States foreign policy, neoliberal capitalism, the Israel-Palestine conflict, and mainstream news media. His ideas in this area have proved highly influential within the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements, yet have drawn significant criticism, with some critics accusing Chomsky of anti-Americanism and alleging that he is sympathetic to genocide denial and despotic regimes.
Articles      
What Is The Common Good? (January 7, 2014)
Remembering Howard Zinn (March/April 2010)
Starving the Poor (May 15, 2007)
A Just War? Hardly (May 9, 2006)

Videos       

Books        

many more @ amazon.com/chomsky

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)