Valeria Wasserman Chomsky, wife of the esteemed linguist and activist Noam Chomsky, has dispelled rumors surrounding her husband’s death.
What Happened: Earlier on Tuesday, false reports of Chomsky’s death had been circulating, causing him to trend on social media. The 95-year-old, who is known as the father of modern linguistics, had been hospitalized in Brazil for recovery from a stroke he suffered a year ago, reported ABC News.
His wife Valeria Chomsky has now responded by saying, “No, it is false,” in an email to the Associated Press on Tuesday.
The Beneficencia Portuguesa hospital in Sao Paulo has also announced that Chomsky was discharged on Tuesday to continue his treatment at home.
Publications such as Jacobin and The New Statesman had even published obituaries for Chomsky. These were later retracted, with Jacobin changing its headline to “Let’s Celebrate Noam Chomsky” and The New Statesman removing its essay altogether. Brazilian news site Diario do Centro do Mundo also retracted its story and issued a correction.
Why It Matters: Noam Chomsky, a critic of U.S. foreign policy and a former professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been residing in Brazil since 2015. In 2017, he joined the College of Social & Behavioral Sciences at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Last year, Chomsky criticized OpenAI’s ChatGPT, stating that it had no educational benefits and was merely high-tech plagiarism. “For years, there have been programs that have helped professors detect plagiarized essays. Now it's going to be more difficult because it's easier to plagiarize, but that's about the only contribution to education that I can think of,” he said then.
Photo by orhan akkurt on Shutterstock
Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of Benzinga Neuro and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
© 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
Comments
Trade confidently with insights and alerts from analyst ratings, free reports and breaking news that affects the stocks you care about.