Editing Hegemony or Survival (section)

==Background==
[[File:Noam Chomsky, 2004.jpg|thumb|right|150px|Chomsky in 2004]]
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) was born in [[Philadelphia]], Pennsylvania, to Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe.{{sfn|Barsky|2007|pp=9–11}} Becoming academically involved in the field of [[linguistics]], Chomsky gained a PhD and secured a teaching job at the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]]. In the field of linguistics, he is credited as the creator or co-creator of the [[Chomsky hierarchy]] and the [[universal grammar]] theory, achieving international recognition for his work.{{sfn|Barsky|2007|pp=86–102}}

Politically, Chomsky had held radical leftist views since childhood, identifying himself with [[anarcho-syndicalism]] and [[libertarian socialism]].{{sfn|Barsky|2007|p=95}} A staunch critic of [[Foreign policy of the United States|U.S. foreign policy]], he arose to public attention for these views in 1967, when ''[[The New York Times]]'' published his article, "[[The Responsibility of Intellectuals]]", a criticism of the [[Vietnam War]].{{sfn|Barsky|2007|p=122}}
His [[media studies|media criticism]] has included ''[[Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media]]'' (1988), co-written with [[Edward S. Herman]], an analysis articulating the [[propaganda model]] theory for examining the media.

Chomsky is the author of over 100 books,{{sfn|chomsky.info: Books}} and has been described as a prominent cultural figure.{{sfn|Dellinger|2003}} According to the [[Arts and Humanities Citation Index]] in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar from 1980 to 1992, and was the eighth most cited source overall.{{sfn|''MIT News Office''|1992}}{{efn|"According to a recent survey by the Institute for Scientific Information, only Marx, Lenin, Shakespeare, Aristotle, the Bible, Plato, and Freud are cited more often in academic journals than Chomsky, who edges out Hegel and Cicero." {{harvcol|Hughes|2001}}}}{{efn|"Judged in terms of the power, range, novelty and influence of his thought, Noam Chomsky is arguably the most important intellectual alive today. He is also a disturbingly divided intellectual." {{harvcol|Robinson|1979}}}}

The book was published as the first in [[American Empire Project|The American Empire Series]], edited for Metropolitan Books by Steve Fraser and [[Tom Engelhardt]]. The series had been devised as a vehicle for works of [[anti-imperialism]] that were critical of U.S. foreign policy. Engelhardt informed an interviewer that the series reflected their "counterinterventionary impulse" and represented an attempt to reclaim "the word" from the [[Right-wing politics|political right]] in the United States.{{sfn|Hogan|2003}} They agreed to publish with Metropolitan because it was co-run by Engelhardt and Sara Bershtel.{{sfn|Hogan|2003}} In conjunction with the publication of the book, Chomsky answered a series of public questions on the website of ''[[The Washington Post]]''.{{sfn|''The Washington Post''|2003}}