Widely acknowledged as one of the greatest thinkers of our times, Noam Chomsky is coming to Cardiff to deliver a lecture at St Davids Hall on 12 March.
Chomsky – American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and political activist is an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.). Some even say he is one of the fathers of modern linguistics.
Organisers Ghaith Jayousi and Jack Parker told us:
“It started with a joke, grew into an ambition and was soon a reality.”
Jayousi continued:
“Within a week of our announcement – that Noam Chomsky would be visiting Cardiff, some 5000 people from all over the world had shown interest on Facebook, creating an event too large for even the mammoth of social networking websites to handle.”
“When I first mentioned the idea of getting Noam Chomsky to Cardiff to a friend one year ago, his direct response was “You will have to book the Millennium Stadium for this”. A comment we both found funny at the time. Soon after this conversation I wrote Professor Chomsky a quick invitation to come to Cardiff – and I didn’t imagine, even in my wildest dreams, that I will get a positive response in less than 45 minutes, but I did.”
“The comic suggestion of booking the Millenium Stadium was probably the most mature suggestion for this event so far.”
“Within a week of announcing the Chomsky event on facebook by merely inviting 50 people to the event, an electronic social chain reaction commenced and kicked the number of attendees within a week to more than 5,000, our inboxes were flooded with passionate queries about the event, and generous offers to help out. Cardiff Student Union got dozens of phone calls from people trying to secure tickets and we soon realised that our initial projections of 700 people to turn out were extremely underestimated.”
Jayousi adds:
“St. David’s Hall was consequently booked for the event, but even this mega-sized venue was dwarfed by the popularity of Professor Chomsky, and it’s obvious to us that this impressively large auditorium that has fitted audiences for many celebrities in the UK in the past will fail to absorb even a fraction of those interested in attending Chomsky’s talk about the current crises in the middle east.”
Welsh Icons will be publishing more information on how the event came about in the next day or two – as they say in the movies’ Watch this space’.
You can book tickets NOW by visiting http://www.stdavidshallcardiff.co.uk/English/Noam-Chomsky-12/3/2011/
Tickets are also available from the St Davids Hall box office.
