Talk:Noam Chomsky

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Some remaining tasks to take this article to featured status, with some imported from the recent peer review:

• Review all citations for text–source integrity
• Replace primary sources with best-in-class sources
• Replace chomsky.info sources
• Bundle citations with {{sfnm}} where feasible
• Rewrite the parts that rely on "Brain from Top to Bottom"
• Rewrite the beginning of § Universal grammar and add a paragraph break
• Define "rationalism" as parallel to definition of "empiricism"
• Get a better source for Saudi Arabia political views; try McGilvray
• Get a better source for views on partition of Palestine
• Reduce hagiography in § In politics: remove quotes, pare second paragraph, expand on Srebrenica massacre remarks, consider page number for Rabbani 2012, consider paring re: Horowitz, Kay, ADL, Dershowitz
• Address history of controversial statements on genocide in the political beliefs section doi:10.5038/1911-9933.14.1.1738
• Turn the achievements laundry list into readable prose
• Confirm with sourced prose or remove the flatlist items from the infobox
• Add commas after "in year X" clauses
• Consider whether to expand on his views on the Russian invasion of Ukraine
• Incorporate noteworthy anti-Chomsky critique into the Political views section so the final section can focus on Influence/Legacy
• Cross-reference Fieser, James; Dowden, Bradley (eds.). "Noam Chomsky". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. ISSN 2161-0002. OCLC 37741658. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Text "chomsky-philosophy" ignored (help)

• Invite reviewers to the FA nom

czar 04:21, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

And I think the choice is that sparse. Once the info is in the Wall Street Journal, it would be active hiding on our part not to include it.

This is different than whether or not to include it in the Lead. which I do not favor.

——————

I suggest something like the following:

Convicted abuser Jeffrey Epstein helped Chomsky move $270,000 following the death of Chomsky’s first wife. According the Wall Street Journal as summarized by Forbes, Chomsky also met with Epstein dozens of times. When first contacted by the Wall Street Journal, Chomsky said, “First response is that it is none of your business. Or anyone’s. Second is that I knew him and we met occasionally.”"Jeffrey Epstein Moved Money For Noam Chomsky, Paid Bard President Botstein $150,000, Report Says". Forbes. May 17, 2023.

@Muboshgu:, hi, you might want to be part of this conversation. FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 20:42, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

We've already had this discussion. See Talk:Noam Chomsky/Archive 16#Association with Jeffrey Epstein. – Muboshgu (talk) 20:48, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

Adding the bold here so that others can read the 2023 discussion. – Muboshgu (talk) 01:21, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

I like this ~2025-35188-76 (talk) 21:58, 24 November 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. I’ll give it a read. If we include it, we should probably also include “ . . placing them among scores of prominent figures who met with the financier after he pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting a minor for prostitution.“ (from Forbes) And whether this makes it better or worse, we do not need to draw that conclusion. We simply present the info and let our readers draw their own conclusions. FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 22:08, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

(from Forbes) “The meetings were to discuss academic topics like geopolitics and neuroscience, often including world leaders like former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak”

This is more reason to include, since it involves Chomsky’s political work.

Now, the worse thing is a “compromise” in which we include one sentence because it would make it look like Chomsky is guilty (and that we’re too embarrassed to include more).

I read the discussion from 2023, and find myself agreeing more with the persons in favor of “include.” It seems several of the “include” side bowed out and/or got busy with other things. Meaning, consensus is a human process afterall, of course it is.

@Muboshgu:, what might you recommend? May I contact each person in that previous discussion, and let them know that it’s with your permission? FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 22:55, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

I still recommend that we don't include it because it isn't a noteworthy part of Chomsky's biography and presents a "guilt by association" connection where it doesn't exist. Same as I recommended two years ago.

You are right that one single sentence would likely lead many to assume guilt, but a whole paragraph is WP:UNDUE given that Chomsky used a financier for his proper job skills and has never been alleged to have visited the island.

I don't agree with the assessment that several of the “include” side bowed out and/or got busy with other things. It's just as likely that they saw that "exclude" was "winning" and they gave up. Consensus from two years ago was clearly to not have any mention of Epstein in this article.

You don't need my permission to ping editors. Of course if you want to revisit that discussion they should be notified. – Muboshgu (talk) 00:26, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

I am uncertain whether to include or not. Is this something that is relevant to Chomsky, or will improve the article in some way? Presumably Epstein (and any rich or famous celebrity) will have met many hundreds of people during their life; once they become notorious for wrongdoing, do we go back and trace the ones that knew him well during his life by happenstance or for reasons not connected with their crimes, and then stick a few sentences in all the articles? 'A' knew Epstein and met him a dozen times; 'B' knew Epstein and was on his yacht half a dozen times; 'C' knew Epstein, and attended fund-raisers for his fave politician ten times; ...; 'Z' knew Epstein, and walked his dogs once a week for seven years. Legitimate question. I tend to think not, unless it was picked up by the press at a level which passes WP:DUEWEIGHT, compared to all the other things Chomsky had done in his life. Do these meetings pass that threshold? Or are they one of thousands of things the press has noted about Chomsky, not all of which meet the level necessary for encyclopedic coverage? Mathglot (talk) 00:57, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

I don't believe there is any other RS coverage connecting Epstein to Chomsky. (Edit: there's also a Guardian piece in the talk archives.) – Muboshgu (talk) 01:19, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

Expanding on my WP:DUEWEIGHT comment with an illustration: the term Afghanistan does not occur in this article (and occurs once at Political positions of Noam Chomsky). Here are several hundred sources about Chomsky on Afghanistan. Is the factoid about Epstein more deserving of space in this article, than something about Afghanistan? Maybe if someone writes Personal life of Noam Chomsky it would merit a mention there. Or maybe not. Mathglot (talk) 01:47, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

The Forbes article says “dozens” of meetings and also says “often including world leaders like former Israeli Prime Minister Ebud Ehud Barak.”

@Mathglot:, Hi, the fact that we go skimpy on Afghanistan I’m not sure is a slam-dunk for going skimpy on other topics. If a fan of Chomsky or a semi-fan finds out someplace else, they might feel cheated. So, might a critic. FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 02:41, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

I think I wasn't clear about the WP:DUEWEIGHT example. Whether we "go skimpy" on a topic here is not the point. The point is, how much has a topic actually been covered in reliable sources, so that it hits a threshold of coverage and importance such that we may summarize it here in a general article about Chomsky, in rough proportion to the amount of reliable, independent, secondary coverage it gets? Are there hundreds of books and scholarly articles that cover the Epstein connection? Then by all means, include it. Are there just a dozen or two? Then, it becomes more doubtful, because Chomsky has been written about in such detail on so many topics, that you cannot cover all of them. Are there just a few sources, or even just one? Then maybe it just doesn't have the weight (yet) to appear in a general article like this one. This is an encyclopedic article, and if there isn't room for it per WP:DUEWEIGHT, then there isn't. If you want to argue for inclusion, please do so based on Wikipedia policies and guidelines; one hypothetical reader feeling cheated about something they didn't find here is not sufficent justification. (edit conflict) Mathglot (talk) 03:02, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

Chomsky plus Afghanistan equals content boring to most. Chomsky plus Epstein has a WP:SENSATIONAL component to it that we must be wary of. – Muboshgu (talk) 14:00, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

The fact that Chomsky met with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in Epstein’s presence not important? Only prime minister for two years from 1999 to 2001, but defense minister for a longer period. FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 13:50, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

So? Famous person meets famous person. Pretty WP:ROTM without anything of substance happening. – Muboshgu (talk) 13:59, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

But politics is one of Noam’s main fields, right? Linguistics and politics are probably 1A and 1B. FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 18:34, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

Should we now include more about his relationship with Epstein revealed today such as the parts you are removing despite them coming from legitimate sources?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/03/epstein-files-noam-chomsky

"'The best way to proceed is to ignore it,' Chomsky wrote, according to text signed under his first name that Epstein sent to a lawyer and publicist. 'That’s particularly true now with the hysteria that has developed about abuse of women, which has reached the point that even questioning a charge is a crime worse than murder.'" ~2026-74919-6 (talk) 15:35, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

And while we’re talking article quality . . . I’d encourage people that when you read something on Wiki which really raises your eyebrow, time and interest permitting, please dive in and look up the ref. See if the ref still supports our passage in Wiki. It may have started out doing a fine job of summarizing, but as things are rewritten and moved around a little, the meaning can subtly change. Especially if there were a couple of edits on top of each other.

This type of spot-checking is relatively rare behavior. All the same, I think we should try to make it a little less rare! :-) FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 18:34, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

.

.

@Softlemonades:, @DFlhb:, @GuardianH:, @Rauisuchian:,@Nishidani:, Hi, each and every one of you are invited to a new discussion, if you so wish! :-) FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 02:51, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

Why is Jeffrey Epstein not mentioned a single time in the current version of this article??? Chomsky continued a friendship with Epstein for years after Epstein's conviction, and exchanged numerous long emails with Epstein (which were released by the House Oversight Committee in November 2025), and Epstein helped Chomsky move $270,000 between bank accounts in 2018. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/17/jeffrey-epstein-noam-chomsky-bard-college-president ~2025-31208-44 (talk) 21:37, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

Also, in an email dated August 6, 2015, Epstein wrote to Chomsky: "you are of course welcome to use apt in new york with your new leisure time, or visit new Mexico again." They must have been close friends, and this was years after Epstein's conviction for sex trafficking. ~2025-31208-44 (talk) 21:46, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

If you read above, you'll see why the 2018 financial transaction is not included. As for the House Oversight Committee emails, they were just released a few days ago and haven't been discussed here yet. Where's a source? – Muboshgu (talk) 21:48, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

WBUR, New Yorker, Miami Herald, NPR (citing Chomsky's letter of recommendation for Epstein). Plenty more where that came from. The relationship was, by Chomsky's own account, significant, which makes it notable, and one Epstein used to launder his own reputation. We know considerably more than we did in 2023—and even in September 2025. 100W bulb (talk) 01:25, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

There is no urgent need to add it now, while information is coming out day by day on the Epstein topic, and may just be the latest flash in the pan that fades away with tomorrow's news. If this turns out to be significant, and of long-lasting media attention and of WP:DUE WEIGHT for the Chomsky article, there will be ample time to add it to the article later. This is not Wikinews (but you could probably add it there, though). Mathglot (talk) 01:55, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

Include Chomsky and Epstein's interactions, insist on facts and a neutral point of view which is not possible now due to recent political controversy and the release of more information still pending. Not that thats going to change the fact that he is completely innocent of whatever crime he is alleged to have committed by word associations and frequency of news articles with the same three factoids. ~2025-35188-76 (talk) 21:57, 24 November 2025 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I just think it's really convenient and weird that people are so resistant to acknowledging the association and calling it "recentism" even though the talk page discussion about it has been happening for months. carrying water for your idea of noam chomsky is interfering with your capacity for viewpoint neutrality--for several of you. 100W bulb (talk) 04:20, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

Here's the title and tagline of the last article about chomsky via Google news, "What Noam Chomsky’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein says about progressive politics

The Left icon overlooked sexual violence, much like India’s literary and cultural progressives have embraced a man whose rape conviction was overturned."

Clearly hoping to imply that Chomsky is the "Left icon" overlooking sexual violence and because of its proximity to the next sentence get people to click on it to see if chomsky is the "cultural progressive" whose rape conviction was overturned.

Within the article it states the following almost immediately, "I must emphasise here that knowing or meeting Epstein does not in any way imply that Chomsky was party to his crimes against girls and women. I’m not suggesting “guilt by association” nor am I interested in a “gotcha” moment at his expense." The new "facts" contained in this article that are supposed to shine a light on the progressive icon are, "In 2023, Chomsky explained why he and his wife befriended Epstein in spite of his conviction for sex crimes against minor girls. “What was known about Jeffrey Epstein was that he had been convicted of a crime and had served his sentence,” he said. “According to prevailing US laws and norms, that yields a clean slate.”" this links to a rolling stone article from two years ago wherein he calls Woody allen a great artist.

Are these men rich and or powerful, yes. Is it a bad look to associate with these people? Yes. Did a whole lot of people do it, yes. Is it fair to now try to equivocate "had a relationship with Epstein" with "does it say he's ok with raping little girls since I think so for clicks"? Case in point another quotation from this article, "If working-class children had complained of being trafficked by a filthy rich CEO to do toxic and dangerous work, and the CEO got away with a rap on his knuckles, would Chomsky argue that he now had a clean slate?" And they answer their own questions, who needs a neutral perspective just put this in too, "But the rules seem different when the working-class children in question are girls, trafficked and enslaved not for factory labour but for sex work. In Chomsky’s political world, these individual survivors of sexual predation are invisible." Working class children! That's really happening. Yes, working class children, a moniker that in itself is an artifact of this person's thinking that those exist everywhere because they exist in india, and seeks to imply that Chomsky, by affiliating with Epstein not only draws the artificial distinction between 11 year olds who were trafficked for sexual purposes, who are invisible, but that 11 year olds who were trafficked for working in factories enjoy great privilege according to Chomsky, sure let's go ahead and put that in too, and that Chomsky said so as a matter of "implying a norm", a crime in itself!

An "association" isn't an admission of guilt but it sure does help sensationalist journalism. Chomsky has contributed an incredible corpus to linguistic and social theory which defines the current discourse around consent, which he is not able to give to you having stroked out in his 90s, to write fictional novels about his adventures on pedo island employing "working class children" and ensuring they know they're better than the "sex slaves".

Does adding a bunch of recent context bent on smearing his name feel like recentism, to me, yes. Most people here want to add it, I'm just obviously very unconvincingly saying add the facts here which is not possible since there is a deluge of trash about Epstein coming out en masse that people want us to publish like it's passed the standard of news. No one cares about your opinion. Just wait until the false Epstein outrage dies down ~2025-35188-76 (talk) 12:43, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

Because you didn't put in a link to a WP:RS, we can't use any of that long comment. Bill Heller (talk) 01:15, 9 February 2026 (UTC)

also, what's there now is neutral point of view. "the relationship was established in X year, Y years after public conviction, extended to at least Z year, and included a letter of endorsement" is all true and all neutral. 100W bulb (talk) 04:21, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

no one here has any objections to this so you're making stuff up to suggest otherwise. ~2025-35188-76 (talk) 12:45, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

ok. 100W bulb (talk) 17:48, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

Late arrival, but several remarks for IP editor ~2025-35188-76 Your diatribe of 7 December 2025 verges on WP:SOAPBOX. Many of your points are reasonable and valid, so there's no need to get aggravated. I am not an LLM but I need to use bullet points.

• You omitted the article URL or publication name that was the focus of your annoyance. From reading your description of it (about Chomsky being indifferent to the plight of "working class children" and the very state of progressive politics) I agree with you, that the content is absurd in context. EDIT: This seems to be the article, via Google News, published by Scroll.in which is probably not WP:RS and has an op-ed tone making me doubt it being WP:NPOV either. What Noam Chomsky’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein says about progressive politics by Kavita Krishnan (6 Dec 2025). Content from this doesn't belong in the BLP.
• Agreed, that Chomsky never went to the island, nor does the Epstein fodder released in late Dec 2025 indicate he did. In the Wall Street Journal article of April 2023, this is the only content about Chomsky: Epstein arranged several meetings in 2015 and 2016 with Mr. Chomsky, while he was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. When asked about his relationship with Epstein, Mr. Chomsky replied in an email: “First response is that it is none of your business. Or anyone’s. Second is that I knew him and we met occasionally.”
  In March 2015, Epstein scheduled a gathering with Mr. Chomsky [and other Harvard academics]. Mr. Chomsky said they had several meetings at Harvard to discuss neuroscience and other topics.
  Two months later, Epstein planned to fly with Mr. Chomsky and his wife to have dinner with them and movie director Woody Allen and his wife, Soon-Yi Previn, the documents show. “If there was a flight, which I doubt, it would have been from Boston to New York, 30 minutes,” Mr. Chomsky said. “I’m unaware of the principle that requires that I inform you about an evening spent with a great artist.”
  In a 2020 interview with the “dunc tank” podcast, Mr. Chomsky said that people he considered worse than Epstein had donated to MIT.
• In this WSJ article of 17 May 2023, this is the only content about Chomsky: Chomsky met multiple times with Epstein after he was a registered sex offender... Chomsky, a political activist and professor, told the Journal that they met occasionally to discuss political and academic topics. Chomsky confirmed that he received a March 2018 transfer of roughly $270,000 from an Epstein-linked account. He said it was “restricted to rearrangement of my own funds, and did not involve one penny from Epstein.”
  Chomsky explained that he asked Epstein for help with a “technical matter” that he said involved the disbursement of common funds related to his first marriage. “My late wife died 15 years ago after a long illness. We paid no attention to financial issues,” he said in an email that cc’d his current wife. “We asked Epstein for advice. The simplest way seemed to be to transfer funds from one account in my name to another, by way of his office.” Chomsky said he didn’t hire Epstein. “It was a simple, quick, transfer of funds,” he said.
  IP user said, "Chomsky used a financier for his proper job skills and has never been alleged to have visited the island." Chomsky didn't use Epstein as a financier. First, Epstein made it very clear, for decades, that he only accepted clients with at least $1 billion in assets to invest. (I will find sources for that if you insist) and Noam Chomsky is not a billionaire! (Epstein wasn't much of a financier either...) More relevant is Chomsky's own statement, emphasis mine, that he didn't hire Epstein to do work for him in a professional capacity.

These are general comments, not to IP user ~2025-35188-76 in particular:

• I was surprised and dismayed at this quote from Chomsky by WSJ (May 2023) and Rolling Stone, "“What was known about Jeffrey Epstein was that he had been convicted of a crime and had served his sentence,” he said. “According to prevailing US laws and norms, that yields a clean slate.”" No, that is not true for sex crimes. From the date of Epstein's conviction in 2008, he was a registered sex offender for the rest of his life. This has consequences, e.g. in 2014, Epstein was inadmissible to Canada and denied an entrance visa for this very reason, according to CBC News. Is this relevant to Chomsky's BLP? I don't know. I mention it here as a fact to be considered in any future consensus-building for mentioning Chomsky's friendship with Epstein, or the extent of it, in the BLP.
• Be aware that Forbes contributor articles are NOT considered WP:RS. The Forbes article referenced in this talk page (titled Jeffrey Epstein Moved Money For Noam Chomsky etc.) should not be used as a source for this BLP. You can tell that it is a Forbes contributor post (same credibility as a blog post), not a bona fide news article by Forbes reporting staff, from the URL portion, /sites/katherinehamilton/ Seems to me that we shouldn't rush to include more than minimal mention of Epstein as the last tranche (disgorgement?) of Epstein debris has just occured.--FeralOink (talk) 08:01, 9 February 2026 (UTC)

A June 28, 2019 text message from Steve Bannon to Jeffrey Epstein reads: "We are set for Noam on Saturday." This seems to indicate that Noam Chomsky (a lifelong member of the political left) was meeting with Steve Bannon, a well-known member of the far right. This seems rather strange and paradoxical, and we should probably add a mention of it to this Wikipedia article. Source: https://ellieleonard.substack.com/p/the-epstein-bannon-emails-2019-p2 ~2026-72428-6 (talk) 16:24, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

Do you have any proposed text that you want to add, supported by reliable sources? Substacks are not reliable sources. – Muboshgu (talk) 17:08, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

I wonder how many people Chomsky has met and done interviews for in his 70 plus-year career, and how many appointment books all around the country and around the world have an entry, "Set for Noam on Saturday." Maybe 5 to 7,000 or so? If you add this one for Bannon, I would like to add the other 6,999 if that’s okay with you. Mathglot (talk) 23:29, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

Of course there's also the possibility that Chomsky and Bannon were just acquaintances, and that Chomsky has had 1000s of such relationships after being alive for nearly a century. Either way, this does not seem particularly noteworthy. ~2026-79374-2 (talk) 23:39, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

Something I noticed, thought it might be of interest ping Mathglot and Muboshgu about IP editor ~2026-72428-6 who created this topic on 2 Feb 2026. Editor is new to Wikipedia, and after adding this section, they went on to quickly add five other very similar BLP talk page entries (all were tagged with "Possible BLP issue or vandalism") the same evening, see here. Don't think it is worthy of ANI as it ceased after that.--FeralOink (talk) 08:55, 9 February 2026 (UTC)

Unless I'm mistaken, this article contains zero reference to this debacle. I'm in favor of including a section on this.

Chomsky appeared in the documentary "Grammar of Happiness" and has some very, shall we say, interesting quotes – which, just to be clear, that documentary kind of paints him in a negative light and Everett in a positive light and I don't necessarily agree with much of how the topic in general is presented in that documentary. Nevertheless, I feel the documentary's mere existence and Chomsky's presence in it should indicate that the whole Pirahã controversy deserves at least a mention in this article.

---

Some relevant notes I compiled back when studying this in a university anthropology class (containing a lot of my own opinion, I recognize this is not the WP neutral voice and am not proposing my college notes be taken as a draft, but to provide some sources I collected at the time and thoughts that are relevant to the inclusion of this section):

• In linguistic terms, what Everett is getting at is that Pirahã utterly lacks hypotaxis, or said another way, only exhibits parataxis; or said another way, that Pirahã has no subordination. The documentary calls this “recursion” and explains it well enough.

• Furthermore, I’d like to just go ahead and quote an abstract from Geoffrey K. Pullum on the topic (2024):
  • “Nevins, Pesetsky, and Rodrigues attempt to represent Everett as having dishonestly concealed earlier evidence of hypotaxis in the language. They are not successful. Later attempts by others to exhibit self-embedding in Pirahã syntax fare even worse. The issue has little general importance for linguistics, since nothing important about language or humanity hangs on whether an upper bound on sentence length exists. In pursuing the matter, Everett’s accusers have done him a gross injustice.”
    • Full text PDF: https://zenodo.org/records/12665907/files/434-GibsonPoliak-2024-2.pdf?download=1
  • As the Pullum quote may illustrate, the idea that hypotaxis is a fundamental idea in linguistics, or indeed a fundamental part of Universal Grammar, is a weird claim.
    • Clearly there was really some drama between Chomsky and Everett over this but it seems like the wider linguistic community thought this was all kind of silly.
    • Chomsky's specific ideas are far from universally upheld or foundational (instead, the idea that there is a universal grammar has had some staying power, but Chomsky’s idea of what that looks like has been largely abandoned well before the whole Pirahã thing) and Everett seems to be attacking a strawman of sorts. Or at least, this is the impression I get of Everett from this documentary.

• Furthermore, I’d just like to go ahead and quote an interview of Noam Chomsky (in 2006, 9 years before the documentary). In response to the question: “To what extent does the language of the Pirahã tribe (which has no subordinate clauses, numbers or descriptive words) invalidate your work on linguistics?”
  • "The reports are interesting, but do not bear on the work of mine (along with many others). No one has proposed that languages must have subordinate clauses, number words, etc. Many structures of our language (and presumably that of the Pirahã) are rarely if ever used in ordinary speech because of extrinsic constraints."
    • https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/noam-chomsky-you-ask-the-questions-5330371.html#:~:text=To%20what%20extent,of%20extrinsic%20constraints.
  • It seems like a lot of the controversy was not started by Chomsky himself, but rather by belligerent dogmatists in his camp. Pullum details this elaborately in the chapter I linked earlier.
    • That said, Chomsky did call Everett a charlatan, and expressed views on recursion in this very documentary that are directly contradictory to these words; so I have no idea when he transitioned from the rather sane opinion on display in this interview to the hostile views expressed at other times.

---

I understand if the consensus is that most of the more in-depth information should instead go on Daniel Everett's page, but I definitely think there ought to be at least a subsection or short paragraph within this article that has a reference like:

at the beginning of it.

I'm willing to draft the section if we're agreed on including it (and might do so either way later).

Saturnine (talk) 22:14, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Do you have any WP:RS that demonstrate that WP:WEIGHT would be appropriate? Because that one question and answer in that Independent piece doesn't meet that. – Muboshgu (talk) 23:46, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

I was going to make essentially the same point as Muboshgu just did, i.e., it is a WP:DUEWEIGHT issue. This article is a biography of Noam Chomsky, who has revolutionized the world of linguistics, and made major contributions to political comment and analysis. The article can only summarize the high points of a lifetime of achievements from 40,000 feet. Does the issue you raise qualify as one of the most important issues of his long career, and exhaustive coverage in books, journals, and the press? I think the answer to that question is clear: the section you propose may deserve a write-up in some article, but probably not this one, per due weight.

Did you know that there are 26 articles that are so centrally about Chomsky that they have Chomsky in the title, and 2,000 other articles that mention or cite him? Chomsky is nothing if not ubiquitous and controversial, and has dustups on all sorts of issues covered in linguistic journals, and there certainly isn't room for them here. If there is an article where it would fit and there are sufficient citations for it, by all means add it there. If not, maybe you could create a new article, like maybe, Linguistic controversies involving Noam Chomsky (possibly a list article), and start it off with this issue, and add a couple more so it isn't the only one. Given that the wider linguistic community thought this was all kind of silly, I question whether it rates more than a sentence or two in an a stand-alone list article about Chomsky controversies. What do you think? Mathglot (talk) 21:31, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

Chomsky is nothing if not ubiquitous and controversial, and has dustups on all sorts of issues covered in linguistic journals, and there certainly isn't room for them here.

This is a good point.

Given that the wider linguistic community thought this was all kind of silly, I question whether it rates more than a sentence or two in an a stand-alone list article about Chomsky controversies.

So to clarify what I had meant by that point, this controversy did make a big stir involving a number of linguists and all too many published papers. The controversy is still being taught about in university linguistics classes and in university anthropology classes in the US - I say that from personal experience, and if desired I can link to the textbooks said classes required as sources. At the same time, however, the controversy is taught about seemingly primarily as an example of how not to conduct academic discourse (as well as possibly to dissemble much of generative linguistics and universal grammar). The fiasco was silly, but it did make waves and continues to cause discussions in lecture halls. This was the main reason I thought a section on this might be appropriate directly in the Chomsky article – as a student learning about this and looking for more information, I remember being surprised to find zero mention of it or anything related to it on this page.

Aside: I don't have a ton of time for this at present and don't check my Wiki notifications all that often, so I apologize about sporadic activity and delayed responses.

Saturnine (talk) 21:02, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

I've often stated that we need a bit more than just "As a result of his influence, there are dueling camps of Chomskyan and non-Chomskyan linguistics" - this really ought to be at least a few sentences, enough for the reader to get an idea of how much Chomskyan linguistics is or is not the dominant paradigm.--Eldomtom2 (talk) 17:29, 9 February 2026 (UTC)

See https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2026/02/noam-chomskys-reputation-will-never-recover-from-the-epstein-files ~2026-10457-26 (talk) 17:07, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

The New Statesman is a leftist magazine. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ~2026-10457-26 (talk) 17:09, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

Is there an edit you're proposing with this source? – Muboshgu (talk) 18:25, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

I do not own a wikipedia account, and am not interested in being an active wikipedia editor. I am requesting the reversion of the following diff:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Noam_Chomsky&diff=prev&oldid=1191179667

on the grounds that the removed information was actually factually correct.

You can refer this article as source / evidence: https://wheredowestand.org/noamchomsky/ Mmdts (talk) 12:47, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/01/noam-chomsky-the-voice-silenced-the-legacy-unending/ ~2026-12901-08 (talk) 07:48, 28 February 2026 (UTC)