Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, political activist, author and lecturer who is also a Professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Chomsky is well known in the academic and scientific community as one of the fathers of modern linguistics. Since the 1960s, he has become known more widely as a political dissident, an anarchist and a libertarian socialist intellectual. Chomsky is often viewed as a notable figure in contemporary philosophy.
Beginning with his opposition to the Vietnam War, Chomsky established himself as a prominent critic of United States foreign and domestic policy. He has since established himself as a prominent and prolific political philosopher and commentator. He is a self-declared anarcho-syndicalist as an adherent of libertarian socialism, which he regards as "the proper and natural extension of classical liberalism into the era of advanced industrial society".