Professor Emeritus at MIT is Leading Philosopher, Political Activist, Linguist
What: Noam Chomsky, professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of this country’s leading intellectuals, will deliver a lecture entitled, “The Obama Transition: Crises, Challenges, Opportunities.” The lecture is free and open to the public.
When: Wednesday, April 15 at 4:30 p.m.
Where: The Washington Room in Mather Hall on the Trinity campus.
Background: Chomsky is one of the United States’ true renaissance scholars, having been known throughout his career as one of the fathers of modern linguistics, a philosopher, cognitive scientist, political activist, author and lecturer. Since the 1960s, he has also acquired a reputation as a political dissident, an anarchist and a libertarian socialist intellectual. He’s written more than 100 books.
Randy Harris, author of The Linguistics Wars, has described Chomsky as “a hero of Homeric proportions, belonging solidly in the pantheon of our country’s finest minds, with all the powers and qualities thereof…The speed, scope and synthetic abilities of his intellect are legendary. He is, too, a born leader, able to marshal support, fierce and uncompromising support, for positions he develops or adopts. Often, it seems, he shapes linguistics by sheer force of will.”
Chomsky received his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He began his academic career as an assistant professor at MIT in 1955 and was named the Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Modern Languages and Linguistics in 1966. He has also taught at Columbia University; the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of California, Berkeley; and Syracuse University. He was a member of the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton University from 1958 to 1959; the John Locke lecturer at Oxford University in 1969; the Bertrand Russell Memorial Lecturer at Cambridge University in 1971; the Nehru Memorial Lecturer at the University of New Delhi in 1972; the Huizinga Lecturer at the University of Leiden in 1977; the Woodbridge Lecturer at Columbia University in 1978 and the Kant Lecturer at Stanford University in 1979.
At various times, he has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences; American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Linguistic Society of America; American Philosophical Association; American Association for the Advancement of Science; British Academy; British Psychological Society; Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina; and the Utrecht Society of Arts and Sciences.
Along with his career as a linguist, Chomsky has been active in left-wing politics. In 1965 he organized a citizen's committee to publicize tax refusal in protest to the war in Vietnam. Four years later he published his first book on politics, American Power and the New Mandarins.
By the 1980's he had become both the most distinguished figure of American linguistics and one of the most influential left-wing critics of American foreign policy. He considers himself to be a libertarian socialist.
According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar during the period from 1980 to 1992, and one of the eight most frequently cited authors of all time.
Chomsky has long been of the opinion that both political parties are essentially the same. However, last year he broke with past practice and endorsed Barack Obama for president. Chomsky told The Real News that a continuation of Bush-style policies, as represented by Republican Sen. John McCain, “would have a significant impact on the public.” Chomsky went on to say that, “although both candidates are well to the right of the population in terms of actual policy, ‘there is nothing wrong with picking the lesser of two evils’.”
Shortly after the November election, Chomsky was quoted as calling it “historic.”
“To have a black family in the White House is a momentous achievement,” Chomsky said. “In fact, it’s historic in a broader sense. The two Democratic candidates were an African American and a woman, both remarkable achievements. If we go back, say, 40 years, it would have been unthinkable.”
For more information, please contact the Department of Sociology at 860-297-2346.