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Noam Chomsky

By timothycannella

  • Birth

    Avram Noam Chomsky was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

  • Attended the University of Pennsylvania

    At the age of 16, he attended the University of Pennsylvania.

  • The Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew

    During his master's thesis, he adopted Nelson Goodman's views on formal systems and the philosophy of science and transformed them into a novel.

  • Ph.D. in Linguistics

    Noam received his Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania.

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

    Noam was appointed to a teaching position at MIT, and he later established a new graduate program in linguistics.

  • Syntactic Structures

    Noam argued against famous psychologist Skinner that human beings were born with the ability to realize the generative grammars that constitute every human language.

  • Appointment to Full Professor at MIT

    Noam was appointed as a full professor at MIT. He later was appointed Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Modern Languages and Linguistics in 1966, and Institute Professor in 1976 at MIT.

  • The Vietnam War

    Noam became more vocal and publicly involved in speaking out as an activist against the Vietnam War (or the Vietnam invasion as he would say)

  • The Responsibility of Intellectuals

    In one of his first political essays, he discussed cases where intellectuals in powerful positions failed to tell the truth and lied about the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War

  • Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

    Noam and economist Edward Herman analyzed journalists reporting in the mainstream media. They showed evidence of selection, skewing of data, filtering of information, and outright invention in support of assumptions that helped to justify the controlling influence of corporations in U.S. foreign policy and domestic politics.

  • Necessary Illusions

    He wrote in Necessary Illusions, "The media serve the interests of state and corporate power, which are closely interlinked, framing their reporting and analysis in a manner supportive of established privilege and limiting debate and discussion accordingly."

  • Retirement

    Noam retired as professor emeritus from MIT.

  • An interview with Noam Chomsky

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