Aviva Chomsky

Aviva Chomsky (born April 20, 1957) is an American teacher, historian, author and activist. She is a professor of History and the Coordinator of Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies at the Salem State University in Massachusetts. She previously taught at Bates College in Maine and was a Research Associate at Harvard University, where she specialized in Caribbean and Latin American history. She is the eldest daughter of linguists Noam and Carol Chomsky. Her paternal grandfather, William Chomsky (1896–1977), was a Hebrew scholar at, and principal of, Gratz College for many years.

Aviva Chomsky worked for the United Farm Workers union back in 1976 and 1977. She credited this experience with sparking her "interest in the Spanish language, in migrant workers and immigration, in labor history, in social movements and labor organizing, in multinationals and their workers, in how global economic forces affect individuals, and how people collectively organize for social change". At the University of California at Berkeley, she obtained her B.A. in Spanish and Portuguese in 1982, M.A. in History in 1985, and Ph.D. in History in 1990, before she began teaching at Bates College. She became an associate professor of history at Salem State College in 1997, and the Coordinator of Latin American Studies in 1999. She became a full professor in 2002.