Geoffrey Sampson

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Geoffrey Sampson (1944, Broxbourne, Hertfordshire) is Professor of Natural Language Computing in the Department of Informatics, University of Sussex, England.

He was educated at Bristol Grammar School and graduated in Oriental studies from St John's College, Cambridge, followed by study at Yale University in the Linguistics and Engineering & Applied Science departments.^[1]

His academic career has included work in Oriental languages, linguistics and computing, with side interests in philosophy and political and economic thought. He lectured at the London School of Economics, the University of Lancaster and the University of Leeds before moving to Sussex in 1991. ^[1]

He has most recently attracted attention for his academic criticism of the nativist movement in linguistics, represented by academics such as Noam Chomsky, Jerry Fodor and Steven Pinker. Sampson is particularly critical of Pinker's 1994 book The Language Instinct, which he has subjected to sustained commentary in his book The 'Language Instinct' Debate, the first edition of which, published in 1997, was entitled Educating Eve. According to Sampson, Pinker has not publicly addressed these criticisms.^[2]

Sampson was a Conservative member of Wealden District Council (2001-2). He resigned this position after he was attacked by Labour Party and Liberal Democrat ministers and councillors for publishing on his website an article, There's Nothing Wrong With Racism (Except the Name), containing a number of racially sensitive claims. The outcome was subsequently endorsed by Conservative Central Office as "in the best interests of all concerned ...the Conservative party is opposed to all forms of racial discrimination".^[3]

He has since left the Conservative Party and in 2006 joined the United Kingdom Independence Party.^[4]