Chomsky & Chomsky: Apple & Tree

The old adage that the apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree seems to be playing out with a vengeance in the family of legendary left-wing academic Noam Chomsky.

We’ve devoted considerable ink to the sage of MIT over the years and his affection for movements revolutionary and governments totalitarian. His daughter Aviva, an historian, is following in his footsteps at Salem State University.

“My recent work has been in three main areas:  the Cuban revolution, northern Colombia’s coal industry, and immigration and undocumentedness in the United States,” her university page proclaims.  “Thematically, I incorporate the issues of economic development, migration, labor, environment, and global inequality.”

“My book Linked Labor Histories looks at globalization as a long historical process with labor history at its center. It examines how employers have used regional inequalities to gain access to cheaper workers through immigration, plant relocation, and by using the threat of these two tactics to discipline their workers. I focus on several interrelated case studies in New England and Colombia, including the textile industry, the banana industry, and the coal industry, to argue that local labor histories are best understood in a global context. I recently published a brief, analytical college-level text on the Cuban Revolution, and two books on immigration: They Take Our Jobs!  And Twenty Other Myths about Immigration, and Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal. My current research projects include a global history of coal intertwined with a microhistory of northern Colombia, and a history of international solidarity in the Americas.”

In a column for The Daily Signal, Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez remembered that when he debated Chomsky, ”she had declared that there is no repression in Cuba.” Even the Obama Administration, which has adopted a kinder, gentler approach to the Castro regime than its predecessors, won’t go that far.

“The national leadership that included members of the military maintained effective control over the security forces, which committed human rights abuses against civil rights activists and other citizens alike,” according to the U. S. State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. But does Aviva carry this myopia on human rights into the classroom? Her Rate My Professor.com ratings indicate that she does:

• “I have no problem with political leftists. But this woman is so far left she’s off the edge of the map. WAY OFF. Her views are so idealistic and extreme that most of her insight is simply useless. And I hate how rigidly PC everyone has to be during class discussions, otherwise she’ll hate you. Steer clear of this one if you can!”
• “Easy grader if you agree with her opinions, big on essay titles, class is discussion based with no tests” (That was one of her favorable ratings.)
• And here’s another rave: “Chomsky really REALLY knows her stuff, but if you’re not devoted to Latino studies then take another course. She seems to only want her own views reflected in papers, so if you absolutely have to take one of her courses for a diversity requirement get ready to BS your way through papers. A nice lady, though.”
• “If you can recite the **** that she preaches back on papers you’ll do fine.”

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