KCSB-FM Hosts Two Events Featuring MIT Professor Noam Chomsky (Feb. 24th & 28th)

Based at a campus that is over-identified as being primarily a “party school,” the student leaders and staffers of community radio station KCSB-FM 91.9 challenge UCSB students and the greater Santa Barbara community to experience a pair of free events that will help to cultivate a better understanding of our world.

On Friday, February 28th, at 730pm, Professor Noam Chomsky will be making his first public appearance in Santa Barbara in more than 25 years, delivering the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 13th Annual Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future, at the historic Lobero Theatre.

As a co-sponsor of this event, KCSB-FM 91.9 has arranged to air a live broadcast of Chomsky’s sold-out address, which will significantly focus on the existential threats of nuclear war and environmental degradation.

Avram Noam Chomsky is world-renowned Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Not only is he a philosopher, cognitive scientist, and logician, the 85-year-old Chomsky has also been distinguished, since the early days of the Vietnam War, for his peace and social-justice activism, and for his voluminous political commentaries and explorations of political theory.

An outspoken critic of imperialism, militarism, corporate propaganda, and unregulated capitalism, Noam Chomsky’s forthcoming lecture is entitled “Security and State Policy.”

Building on a tradition of “listening parties” in the worlds of music and radio, KCSB-FM invites community members to gather and to hear Noam Chomsky’s reflections on the sources and possible solutions to the greatest problems currently facing us in the 21st Century.

KCSB’s General Manager Kyle Trager (a 4th-Year Communication Studies Major) says, “KCSB wants to suggest that ‘parties’ and intelligent discourse are not mutually exclusive. Hence our challenge to break out from typical escapist Friday-night rituals, and to host ‘listening parties’ on the 28th.” He continues, “Before that, folks should also join us this Monday at a free Chomsky ‘viewing party’ at the MCC.”

On Monday, February 28th, 7pm at the UCSB MultiCultural Center (MCC) Theater, to highlight the breadth of Chomsky’s influence, KCSB will present a free public screening of Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy? An Animated Conversation with Noam Chomsky, from filmmaker Michel Gondry (creator of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep).

Gondry’s innovative new documentary features hand-drawn cartoons to illustrate his complex, lively discussions with Chomsky. As a result, the acclaimed motion picture reveals the brilliant life and thought-provoking work of the “father of modern linguistics.”

KCSB programmer and Development Coordinator Ted Coe says, “My own introduction to Professor Chomsky can be traced back more than 20 years to the documentary Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, which was screened by KCSB-FM at the Isla Vista Theater. All these years later, I’m thrilled that KCSB will be presenting a new Chomsky film, especially one that approaches him from a wholly different, vibrantly colorful, angle.”

Adds Trager: “I encourage all of my fellow students to take part in these events, which embody what I consider the move valuable part of the college experience: the rare opportunity to hear from one of the leading minds of our time, and the chance to reevaluate our pre-conceived notions about the world we live in.”

KCSB Presents Noam Chomsky Documentary and Live Broadcast from the Lobero Theatre

FILM: Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? An Animated Conversation with Noam Chomsky

Monday, February 24th, 7pm

UCSB MultiCultural Center Theater

Free, All-Ages Admission.

LIVE BROADCAST: Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 13th Annual Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future with Noam Chomsky

Sold-Out Talk, Live from the Lobero Theatre

Friday, February 28th, 730pm

Tune In: KCSB-FM 91.9 on the Central Coast, Streaming Live at www.kcsb.org.