Aviva Chomsky was born on the 20th of April 1957 as the first child of linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky and linguist Carol Chomsky. In 1976 and 1977 she worked for the United Farm Workers union which had a big impact on her later work.
“I credit that experience with sparking my 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.”
She earned her B.A. in Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California in Berkeley in 1982. In 1985 she got her M.A. in History. She then became a teaching assistant at the Spanish Department and then changed to the History Department in 1987. In 1990 she got her Ph.D. in History and began working as an assistant professor at the Bates College. She continued her work until 1997 when she became an associate professor of History at the Salem State College. In 1999 she became the Coordinator of Latin American Studies. Since 2002 she is professor of History and coordinator of Latin American Studies at the Salem State University.
Besides her professional career she has been active in Latin American solidarity and immigrants’ rights issues for three decades now, including a membership in the North Shore Colombia Solidarity Committee.
