Noam Chomsky Hits The Road

The sage of MIT is taking his act to Arizona. “Anarcho-syndicalist Noam Chomsky will earn a $62,500 salary to teach a general education course for undergraduates titled ‘What is Politics?’ next spring at the University of Arizona,” Cory Compton reports on the Campus Reform blog maintained by the Leadership Institute. “According to an announcement from UA, Chomsky—a famous leftist linguist, self-described anarcho-syndicalist, and open supporter of the terrorist organization Hezbollah—is regarded as a ‘world-renowned linguist’ and one of the most ‘cited scholars in modern history.'”

It was in his role as “world renowned linguist” that I got to see him nearly 40 years ago at the University of Scranton. Actually, I had no choice.

I prided myself on staying awake for the first minute or two because that meant I’d outlasted most of my classmates by 60 seconds. It did give me the opportunity to hear his opening joke, which I still remember: “I’ll try to appeal to your tactile senses rather than your better natures.” Unfortunately it was not accompanied by a rim shot so most people missed it….

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