On this day: Noam Chomsky is born

Known for his vociferously anti-capitalist and anti-western views, as well as for his poster adorning the walls of many a university room, philosopher and academic Noam Chomsky has made no secret of his views on Israel.

Born Avram Noam Chomsky to a well-off Jewish family in Philadelphia, his father was a professor of Hebrew. He has recalled his childhood in “a Jewish ghetto”, spoken of experiencing antisemitism and said that Judaism formed the major part of his cultural heritage. His masters thesis, completed at the University of Pennsylvania, was titled The Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew and he later spent time living on a kibbutz in Israel.

Known as one of the founders of modern linguistics, his academic career has long been overshadowed by his political activism, from opposition to the Vietnam war in the 1960s to more recent criticisms of US foreign policy.

In the 1980s he sparked controversy by defending the right to free expression of a French academic who had denied the Holocaust. In an interview with the JC regarding the Faurisson affir, he said it was because he thought it wrong that the state had the right to “determine the truths of history.”