The famous intellectual Noam Chomsky enjoyed a warm welcome at York University on Friday, even though he was there as a disembodied torso. Unable to attend in person, the linguist and sometime political theorist spoke to a packed auditorium for over an hour via video conference.

He spoke without notes, hunched in front of a nondescript wall somewhere at MIT. Students, though, were enthused: so many wanted to come that the event had had to be moved to a larger venue to accommodate the demand.

Event organizer Jennifer Rego was effervescent. “It was completely a success to have a packed house of approximately 600 people,” she said. Rego had reason to be happy—it took her and two other York students several months of emails and a trip to Boston to convince Chomsky to speak. “Persistence was our friend,” she explained. “He was enamoured by our initiative and he agreed.”

“I thought it was really interesting,” first-year U of T law student Brendan McCutchen said. “He’s just a really important voice in our society.”

Second-year students Isabel Medel and Tania Lukacsovies made the trek from St. George campus for the event.

“I know he’s an anarchist—I wonder how that will filter into his talk,” Medel said beforehand.

Sadly for Medel, anarchy lost out to the energy crisis in Chosky’s speech. The lecture stuck to three topics the organizers had asked Chomsky to discuss: nuclear weapons, DNA and biomass.

Chomsky listed the virtues of biomass, or organic byproducts, as a viable alternative energy source. He supported the idea in theory, but was quick to condemn the current U.S. pursuit of corn-produced ethanol, which he called “unfeasible economically” and likely to bring high tariffs against cheaper corn from other countries. According to Chomsky, this would ultimately drive up the cost of agricultural products and harm poor countries, with major agricultural companies as the only beneficiaries.

Energy policy provided a segue into Chomsky’s discussion of the socalled “DNA revolution” that brings the possibility to design energy-creating organisms. Modified organisms could have benefits, but the consequences could be dire, leading to, for example, bioweapons used by subnational entities.

The bulk of Chomsky’s talk concerned nuclear proliferation. He repeatedly stressed the “enormous gulf between public opinion and public policy.”

The treaties in place now are so widely violated that even today the “threat of something close to terminal destruction by nuclear war is very high,” said Chomsky.

He ran through a list of examples of how U.S. policy undermines global nuclear stability, such as a hardline approach to the newly-nuclear Iran and North Korea from the Bush administration.

Chomsky ended on a hopeful note, preaching public action on environmental degradation, corporate tyrannies, and government bullying.

“Students have played a leading role in protest and activism, and movements to progressive social change,” he said.