Comment by dropofwill

Generally what people are talking about are his universal grammar or generative syntax theories/approaches, which are foundational to how you approach many topics. Because you build your academic career based on specialization they are hotly contested (for the material reasons of jobs, funding, tenure, etc.).

This leads to people who agree hiring each other and departments ‘circling the wagon’ on these issues. You’ll see this referred to as east vs west coast, but it’s not actually that clearly geographically delineated.

So anyways, these are open questions that people do seriously discuss and study, but the politics of academia make it difficult and unfortunately this often trickles down to students.