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In Demand Growing famous in the academy for his revolutionary work in the fields of linguistics and philosophy, Chomsky found himself the recipient of many invitations to speak and lecture. He continued to travel frequently. In 1966, he visited a number of institutions in California, first as the Linguistics Society of America Professor at the University of California in Los Angeles, and then as the Beckman Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Awards and honorary degrees were bestowed upon him ­ notably an honorary D. Litt. from the University of London in 1967 and an honorary D.H.L. from the University of Chicago in 1967. It therefore comes as no surprise that Chomsky was increasingly immersed in debates about the role of the university in society. An academic of Chomsky's stature could quite easily have benefited from the perks that are available to academic superstars. He chose, instead, to forgo them, because they seemed incompatible with the political and social concerns that had preoccupied him since his youth, and that remained centrally important to his existence. He was now speaking out against human-rights violations, the invasion of Vietnam, the oppressive actions of the ruling elite. And he was doing so in all kinds of forums, from classroom to lecture hall, from correspondence to personal discussion. He didn't mix politics into his linguistics courses, and indeed he notes that he has always been "superscrupulous at keeping my politics out of the classroom." But he did at this time begin to teach undergraduate courses in the humanities program with Louis Kampf: "For me it was just extra courses, outside my teaching responsibilities and department, on social and political issues of various kinds." These courses were, however, not in the mainstream of political sciences and not under the auspices of the political-science department at MIT. In fact, says Chomsky, "that department ran a course for a while, for graduate students, which was literally devoted to finding errors in things I had written (so I was informed by graduate students and young faculty)." One of his courses was called Intellectuals and Social Change, and he describes it as " partly history and `sociology of intellectuals,' and about half about alternative lives in some way other than an academic career ­ all sorts of fascinating people. Another course was on politics and ideology. . . the contents of which can be found in, for example, American Power and the New Mandarins" (13 Feb. 1996).

The Civil Rights Act, 1964

The student-protest movement was exploding in the United States, and within it Chomsky found allies and audiences. But this is not to say that universities were the focal point for political discussions. Chomsky says: "My first talks about the war were in churches (with maybe four people: the organizer, some drunk who walked in, the minister, and some guy who wanted to kill me) or someone's living room, where a few neighbors were gathered." There were talks at colleges, "but then usually in a classroom, and we would mix up a dozen topics in the hope that someone would come. You could get as many students out about Venezuela as about Vietnam in those days" (13 Feb. 1996). The student interest came later on. The first big public event was in October of 1965, on the Boston Common (sort of a Hyde Park institution). I was to be a speaker, but the demonstration was attacked by raging crowds (many of them students, marching over from universities), and I was more than thankful that hundreds of cops were there ­ not very sympathetic, as you can guess, but the city didn't want people murdered on the common. The press, including the most liberal press, was extremely hostile; radio was hysterical. It's true that a couple of years later there were many ­ sometimes thousands ­ of people in lecture halls. But even then, most of the talks were elsewhere; open air demonstrations, churches, etc. (13 Feb. 1996) While he admired "the challenge to the universities" that the students were so vehemently presenting, Chomsky thought their rebellions were "largely misguided," and he "criticized [them] as they were in progress at Berkeley (1966) and Columbia (1968) particularly. Same at MIT, later" (27 June 1995). He maintained that it was not sufficient merely to speak out against the ruling classes; drawing upon his knowledge of previous revolutionary activities, he gauged the actions and effects of the current uprisings. "It was rather complex because the students generally considered me a natural ally and were often surprised at my skepticism about how they were focusing their protests, and criticism of what they were doing ­ sympathetic in spirit, but quite critical. Led to considerable conflict, in fact" (27 June 1995).