A glance at the November issue of Prospect: Chomsky as the world’s top public intellectual
Noam Chomsky, the controversial author and professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been voted the world’s leading public intellectual from a list of 100 prominent thinkers compiled by the British magazine.
Mr. Chomsky first won acclaim for his transformational-grammar theory, which holds that the ability to form language is an innate human trait. But he is better-known for his outspokenness on political issues. He was a major voice against the Vietnam War and continues to argue against American policies that he finds immoral. He falls into a line of “oppositional intellectuals,” writes David Herman, a contributing editor for the magazine, in an explanation of the poll. Mr. Chomsky’s selection, he adds, proves that “we still yearn for such figures.”
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