Noam Chomsky

[Filuwaúrdjan]

He's a bad man with rather unpleasant politics and has been for a very long time: we do not need to look for recent episodes for confirmation, it is sufficient to see what he has said about Cambodia and Bosnia. None of this has any bearing on his importance as an academic, which is clearly significant even if, like everyone outside his famously Byzantine field*, I can't safely comment on whether he was 'right' in his grand theory or not. Even if he were wrong about that, it would not decrease his importance (as that's not how scholarly life works), much as the those occasions on which he has made reasonable and accurate political statements do not excuse those on which he has exhibited grotesque and dangerous opinions.

_{*No offence intended to the always pretty large number of people on Atlas who are in it.}