WHAT or who is an intellectual?  If you were to go by a Guardian listing of the top 300 British intellectuals, which includes the likes of Michael Gove, then the term might appear meaningless.

In this short book of essays, marking the half century since Noam Chomsky’s powerful anti-Vietnam war article with the same title in the New York Review of Books, Nicholas Allot defines the intellectual as applying to those privileged to have the “training in reading texts critically, looking up sources … and the time and job security to be able to do so in the sustained way that it takes to expose the lies of the state and other powerful agents.”

Few could deny that Chomsky’s worldwide reputation as linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic and, above all, political activist virtually defines the intellectual.