In 2023, newly disclosed documents related to the late financier Jeffrey Epstein revealed meetings and financial interactions between Epstein and the eminent linguist and public intellectual Noam Chomsky. The disclosures did not accuse Chomsky of criminal conduct. But they confirmed that, years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor, Chomsky met with him multiple times and discussed financial matters. Chomsky’s response was characteristically blunt: his meetings with Epstein, he said, were “none of your business.” The tone may have been legally defensible. Culturally and symbolically, it was something else. Because Chomsky is not merely a professor emeritus at MIT....