Interventions - Background

Background

Noam Chomsky (1928–) was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Becoming academically involved in the field of linguistics, Chomsky eventually secured a job as Professor of Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In the field of linguistics, he is credited as the creator or co-creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, the universal grammar theory, and the Chomsky–Schützenberger theorem. Politically, Chomsky had held radical leftist views since childhood, identifying himself with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism. He was particularly known for his critiques of U.S. foreign policy and contemporary state capitalism, and he has been described as a prominent cultural figure.

Chomsky was first approached to write an op-ed column for the New York Times Syndicate on the on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the basis of his highly influential volume 9/11 (2001). The international attention garnered by the subsequent column, entitled 9-11: Lessons Unlearned, convinced the publishers to commission Chomsky to write roughly 1000-words a month which they would then distribute as op-ed pieces. These are widely picked up overseas, but rarely in the United States and The New York Times itself never published them to its own readers. Internationally, the op-eds have appeared in the mainstream European press including The International Herald Tribune, The Guardian, and The Independent. Regional newspapers in the US that did pick up the op-eds were The Register Guard, The Dayton Daily News, and The Knoxville Voice. A second volume of these, collecting columns from April 2, 2007 to October 31, 2011, was published as Making the Future (2012).