Thursday, March 10, 2011

Go back in time, get Noam back

Am really tired today, and I am falling sleep.

Noam Chomsky delivered today at UCL, via Webcast, the Rickman Godlee lecture (Godlee was a British Sir, surgeon, a Baronet, one of the first to remove a brain tumor). The title is (was): "Contours of global order: domination, stability, security in a changing world". (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/live)

I feel curious about something: Does Chomsky require any honorarium? If so, how much money is UCL paying him for this? In 2005 Chomsky actually delivered an "in-situ" conference in the University of Florida in Gainsville. My friend V., at the time working on her PhD there, told me then that Chomsky got an obscene amount of money for it. Obscene, as the money Edward Lewis paid for Vivian Ward's clothing in Beverly Hills in Pretty Woman. That's why I am curious.

If there is this money involved, do the students have anything to say about it? Apart from running in their elections program the promise of free condoms delivered on campus, what do they have to say about obscene amounts of money?

Would you pay Chomsky that kind of money anyhow for a lecture or two on his Syntactic Structures (1957) or Reflections on Language?



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1 comment:

  1. I was there last night and feel that this kind of lecture is exactly where Uni money is best spent. Also, as far as I could tell, the students would gladly have paid for their year's supply of condoms to see this talk.
    jt

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