U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva says “the release of files containing email exchanges and a photo” showing University of Arizona Professor Laureate Noam Chomsky’s ties to convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein “raises serious questions about the nature and extent of their relationship that warrant further review.”
“Anyone — regardless of political party, position or stature — who is ultimately found to have been directly involved in or complicit in Epstein’s abuse of women and children must be held accountable,” Grijalva, a Tucson Democrat, said in a statement to the Arizona Daily Star Thursday.
U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva, D-Ariz., says: “The release of files containing email exchanges and a photo including Professor (Noam) Chomsky and Jeffrey Epstein raises serious questions about the nature and extent of their relationship that warrant further review.”
Chomsky, 97, a famed linguist who joined the UA faculty in 2017, remains a laureate professor there but has been on unpaid medical leave since Oct. 23, 2023, following what has been described as a massive stroke.
UA spokesperson Mitch Zak declined to comment on whether the UA intends to end its affiliation with Chomsky. He also declined to say if Chomsky, who was paid $135,296 as a professor, is expected to ever teach again at the university. It has been publicly reported that Chomsky has been recuperating in Brazil since the stroke.
Grijalva, immediately after being seated in the U.S. House in November, provided the final 218th signature on the bipartisan discharge petition that led to a House vote to release the “Epstein Files,” the more than 20,000 new files released Nov. 12 by the U.S. House Oversight Committee investigating Epstein’s crimes.
This undated photo released in November by U.S. House Democrats shows Jeffrey Epstein talking with Noam Chomsky, a University of Arizona professor laureate.
The emails include an undated letter of support for Epstein, with a typed signature of Chomsky's name citing his position as a UA laureate professor, as first reported by Massachusetts news outlet WBUR.
Most recently, in 2019, Epstein wrote that he was in talks with Chomsky while considering doing a documentary aimed at repairing Epstein's reputation after the Miami Herald’s reporting on his abuse of women and girls.
This came after the Herald's reporting exposed Epstein's abuse of children, and more than a decade after Epstein, a politically well-connected financier, pleaded guilty in Florida in 2008 to felony solicitation of prostitution and procuring minors to engage in prostitution.
Chomsky, known as “the father of modern linguistics,” was a longtime professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before joining the UA. As a renowned political activist and critic of U.S. policy on numerous issues, from the Middle East to Central America, Chomsky is a left-wing icon known as a symbol of protest and independence.
He was hired in the UA’s department of linguistics in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences in 2017 in a quarter-time appointment as a laureate professor, as well as in the position of Agnese Nelms Haury Chair in the Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice.
Reactions at the UA to the emails about Chomsky are mixed.
“Chomsky was known for responding to anyone, and Epstein appears to have initiated the relationship,” said Mark Stegeman, a UA associate professor of economics.
Stegeman said he is “skeptical of guilt by association and has seen nothing to implicate Chomsky in any illegal or unethical activities connected to Epstein,” a point also made by others.
Noam Chomsky, seen here at the University of Arizona in 2017. The famed linguist remains a UA laureate professor but has been on unpaid medical leave since October 2023. Recently released "Epstein Files" emails discuss his affiliation with Jeffrey Epstein.
'Most valuable experience for me:'
According to news outlets, including The Guardian, the letter attributed to Chomsky in the recently released portion of the “Epstein Files” had the salutation “to whom it may concern.”
This letter said Chomsky had been in “regular contact” with Epstein since meeting him “half a dozen years ago” and that they’d had “many long and often in-depth discussions about a very wide range of topics,” including their own specialties and professional work, as well as a host of other shared interests. “It has been a most valuable experience for me,” the letter says.
The letter describes Epstein arranging a chat with a Norwegian diplomat who supervised the Oslo agreements (1990s accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization), saying it led to a “lively interchange,” and also describes a meeting Epstein arranged with former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, whom Chomsky had “studied carefully and written about.”
In conclusion, the letter said, “The impact of Jeffrey’s limitless curiosity, extensive knowledge, penetrating insights and thoughtful appraisals is only heightened by his easy informality, without a trace of pretentiousness. He quickly became a highly valued friend and regular source of intellectual exchange and stimulation.”
While this letter has been extensively quoted in national media reports, in a Dec. 15 piece in the progressive publication The Nation, editorial board member Greg Grandin contended Chomsky didn’t write this “gushy letter” and that it sounds nothing like him. He guessed that Epstein wrote the letter himself — since there was no university letterhead or signature.
Grandin said Chomsky’s emails to Epstein were more often a response rather than an initiation of the conversation.
“Chomsky’s emails display none of the fawning chatter” found in other influential figures who maintained a friendship and correspondence with Epstein, said Grandin, adding that Chomsky didn’t appear to be “co-opted by whatever access Epstein provided.” Grandin started his piece by saying, “Chomsky has suffered fools, knaves, and hangers-on, both the curious and criminal, too lightly” because of his reputation as someone who always had his door open and talked to anyone who knocked.
Epstein's donation to UA conference at issue
In 2017, a Science of Consciousness conference in San Diego was hosted by UA’s Center for Consciousness Studies. A Science Magazine article in 2019 said Epstein attended and donated to the conference, which was also attended by Chomsky, along with other influential academics, including Deepak Chopra.
Epstein was known to donate millions of dollars to elite institutions such as Harvard University and MIT, cultivating relationships with influential scientists and researchers from different fields.
Epstein’s charity, Gratitude America Ltd., donated $50,000 to the UA for the San Diego conference. UA spokesperson Zak said last week that Epstein wasn’t listed as a member of the organization’s board of directors when the donation was made and that the university was not aware of his involvement. The UA hasn’t received any subsequent donations from this foundation, Zak added.
Gary Rhoades, a UA professor of higher education, told the Star Thursday that it’s an ongoing challenge for universities to manage and vet the gifts they receive.
He said it might make sense for the UA to appoint a task force — as MIT did in 2019 when news broke of gift-receiving ties to Epstein — to “review policies and procedures about gifts” with a focus on recommending ways to strengthen them.
“Moreover, given the significance of sexual assault issues in higher education, and the presence of sexual assault survivors on our campus, it might make even more sense for the university to consider committing resources comparable to the gift (again, as MIT committed to doing in 2019, in different circumstances of considerably greater engagement with Epstein),” said Rhoades.
“The UofA could appoint a committee of relevant actors in this realm to make recommendations about where any such monies could be directed — e.g., to the university’s survivor support services office, to scholarships for survivors, or to wherever survivors and advocates believe would be most appropriate, meaningful, and impactful,” he said. “As small as the amount of money is, it would be a material way of addressing the issues at hand.”
UA spokesperson Zak did not respond to Star questions about that proposal.
Chomsky’s UA employee wife also corresponded with Epstein
Chomsky’s wife, Valeria Wasserman Chomsky, who also worked at the UA, was also in contact with Epstein via email dating back to 2015, according to national reports.
She worked as an academic administrative professional at the UA until her contract ended Sept. 16, 2025, for the part-time salary of $31,016, Zak confirmed. National reports after her husband's stroke said she was in Brazil with him.
Chomsky, Wasserman Chomsky and Epstein’s messages show them discussing a broad range of topics, including politics in the Middle East, linguistics, behavioral sciences and former President Barack Obama’s foreign policy, a Nov. 18 report in the Miami Herald shows.
In a message from August 2015, Chomsky and Epstein were discussing Obama’s deal with Iran to curb the country’s nuclear weapons development program, and Chomsky called the deal “farcical.” Epstein told Chomsky he was welcome to use his Manhattan penthouse or visit him in his “vast, secluded New Mexico ranch whenever he wished,” the Herald reported. The Wall Street Journal in 2023 reported that Epstein also arranged several meetings with Chomsky around this time.
In another email exchange five days after the 2016 U.S. elections, Wasserman Chomsky and Epstein discussed Donald Trump’s candidacy, and she predicted he would win. After Trump’s win, she joked in an email that she should get the job of “political analyst (preferably in the White House).” She suggested Trump would benefit from listening to her husband and asked if Epstein could “arrange it.”
In January 2017, Wasserman Chomsky wrote to Epstein, wishing him a happy birthday, apologizing for missing any celebration, and saying she and her husband hoped to see him soon and raise a toast to him.
Mixed reactions at the UA
Colleagues and students who worked with Noam Chomsky at the UA express opposing reactions to their perception of him after his friendship with Epstein was revealed — some saying it completely changed their understanding of who he is as a person, and others saying it didn’t.
However, they agree it was surprising to learn of Chomsky’s affiliation with Epstein.
“The reason I wanted to work so closely with him was because of his academic background as a political activist, and also because of this huge body of academic work that he does around cultural hegemony, which is very surprising to see that he is linked with people he calls ‘socio-economic elites,’” said a teaching assistant who worked under Chomsky starting in 2019. “So, it is saddening to understand that there is more of a deeper connection and more of a friendly connection (with Epstein).”
The teaching assistant, who asked that their name not be used, said they wouldn’t have applied to work with him if they had known Chomsky was in a friendly relationship with Epstein, a sexual predator. They said they applied to be his teaching assistant because of his work in academic theory and political activism, especially because he was a force in the 1960s and 1970s in protesting the Vietnam War.
“I think it is a trend within academia of who gets to have some sort of grace when controversies come up like this,” the teaching assistant continued, suggesting that someone who is a woman of color in academia would be “discarded immediately.”
“I think it really does put a huge stain on his legacy,” the teaching assistant said, adding that the UA should put out a statement and recognize the deep connections between Chomsky and Epstein.
Marv Waterstone, a UA emeritus professor and a Marxist geographer who co-taught classes with Chomsky in Tucson, said he has no effective way to evaluate what the national media reports say about Chomsky’s friendship with Epstein. He also said he’s not sure what Chomsky’s affiliation with the UA currently consists of, as he’s been on unpaid medical leave since his stroke two years ago.
“We met online in the fall of 2016 through a Skype conversation where we began to plan out the course that we were going to teach in the spring of 2017, and from the very first moment on for the next seven plus years, it was just a delightful relationship,” said Waterstone.
Waterstone said Chomsky is “a fabulous scholar” with endless curiosity, endless energy, openness to conversation about anything, and a commitment to students. He is “a very, very stalwart friend, just an extremely good person, committed free-speech advocate no matter the circumstance, but at the same time, an absolutely committed non-violent person,” Waterstone said.
Epstein text: 'Chomsky is all in'
The Miami Herald’s “Perversion of Justice" series in 2018 revealed Epstein’s “sweetheart” deal with federal prosecutors in Florida, which allowed him to plead guilty to two state prostitution charges to answer for allegations he sexually abused numerous teenage girls.
Afterward, Epstein was considering producing a documentary that would present him in a favorable light, and wrote in 2019 that Chomsky was one of his friends who gave him a thumbs-up, the Herald reported.
“Spoke to Chomsky, he’s all in,” Epstein wrote in a text message to an undisclosed associate, the newspaper reported. Epstein said he could definitely get the “institutes” and “scientists” to be on film, and that the “girls can be forced to testify on video,” adding that he would “explain face-to-face” if they “needed encouragement.”
In February 2019, three days after the U.S. Justice Department announced a new probe into Epstein’s first indictment, an individual he was discussing the documentary idea with told him that he would be in Tucson and could meet Chomsky the next day, the Herald reported.
Epstein replied, saying Chomsky was an “iconic figure” and that the person shouldn’t pass up the chance to talk history and politics with him. While messages suggest this person aligned with the political right, Epstein assured him that he and Chomsky had “more in common” than he thought.
Chomsky and Epstein’s associate did meet the next afternoon, the messages said, with the associate describing Chomsky as a “great gentleman” and “brilliant but short on some basic facts.” Later, in messages with Epstein in June 2019, the associate said Chomsky was in “no shape to film” and that they should “get him scheduled as soon as practicable.”
It was only a week after those June 2019 messages that Epstein was arrested by federal agents, after which he died in his prison cell in a death ruled a suicide.
