Noam Chomsky’s wife denies reports famed linguist and Israel critic died in Brazil

Prominent activist, 95, had been hospitalized while recovering from a stroke suffered a year ago, Valeria Chomsky says, as false reports of his death spread on social media

By AGENCIES and TOI STAFF

Today

File - US linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky is pictured during a press conference in Curitiba, Brazil, on September 20, 2018. (Heuler Andrey / AFP)

Noam Chomsky’s wife on Tuesday denied reports that the famed linguist and Israel critic had died.
“No, it is false,” Valeria Wasserman Chomsky wrote in response to an emailed query from The Associated Press.

Noam Chomsky, 95, had been hospitalized in Brazil while recovering from a stroke suffered a year ago, Valeria Chomsky told the AP last week.

The Beneficencia Portuguesa hospital in Sao Paulo said in a statement that Chomsky was discharged on Tuesday to continue his treatment at home.

The newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo reported that Chomsky was recently hospitalized after a stroke a year ago left him with difficulty to speak and move the right side of his body.

Earlier Tuesday, Chomsky was trending on X as false reports of his death abounded. Jacobin and The New Statesman published obituaries for Chomsky, though the former changed its headline from “We Remember Noam Chomsky” to “Let’s Celebrate Noam Chomsky.” The New Statesman took its essay by former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis down altogether. Brazilian news site Diario do Centro do Mundo also took down its story announcing Chomsky’s death and issued a correction.

File – Gaza psychiatrist and prominent Palestinian human rights campaigner Dr. Eyad Sarraj, left, listens to Jewish-American scholar and activist Noam Chomsky, right, during a meeting with Palestinian youth activists at Almathaf hotel in Gaza City, October 19, 2012. (photo credit: AP/Adel Hana)

The Chomskys have had a residence in Brazil since 2015.

Noam Chomsky became an outspoken left-wing activist on an array of issues from US intervention in Vietnam to labor rights and the environment. He is a fierce critic of the United States government and of Israel, which banned him in 2010.

Known to millions for his criticisms of US foreign policy, Chomsky taught for decades at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2017, he joined the College of Social & Behavioral Sciences at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

He first became known in the 1950s with the revolutionary theory that the ability to form structured language was innate.