Noam Chomsky and David Held

In this interview Professor David Held sits with Professor Noam Chomsky to discuss his background, inspirations and public life.

Noam Chomsky is a US political theorist and activist, and professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Besides his work in linguistics, Chomsky is internationally recognized as one of the most critically engaged public intellectuals alive today. Chomsky continues to be an unapologetic critic of both American foreign policy and its ambitions for geopolitical hegemony and the neoliberal turn of global capitalism, which he identifies in terms of class warfare waged from above against the needs and interests of the great majority.

David Held is Master of University College, Durham. Among his most recent publications are Cosmopolitanism: Ideals and Realities (2010), Globalisation/Anti-Globalisation (2007), Models of Democracy (2006), Global Covenant (2004), Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture (1999), and Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (1995). His main research interests include the study of globalisation, changing forms of democracy and the prospects of regional and global governance. He is a Director of Polity Press, which he co-founded in 1984.

Please also see Professor Chomsky’s recent Castle Lecture – ‘Can human beings survive the 21st Century without a major setback?’

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