In the name of Noam, how can we forget the past?

Hopes and Propects

The comment summed up the capacity to polarise possessed by film producer and self-publicist Michael Moore, and by a man whose trade – linguistics – is rather more abstruse than movie-making. Noam Chomsky is one of those figures who attracts passionate fans and furious opponents in equal measure. Opponents of the professor regard his fans as mushy, illogical, conspiracy-theory-loving extreme liberals. His fans regard his opponents as dangerously powerful, uncaring, inhumane, irresponsible and coercive. To reveal a position, vis-à-vis Chomsky, is to invite immediate pejorative categorisation.

Now in his 80s, Chomsky grew up in a Philadelphian Jewish home where he developed the interest in linguistics that would define his career and see his thinking influence a wide range of disciplines, ranging from child development to computer language.