Noam Chomsky, the famed MIT linguistics professor and darling of the literate left, made an hour-long presentation to the ninth- through 12th-graders at the Hammond Street school Friday morning, addressing the violence in Iraq, the short-sightedness of American foreign policy and the future of international affairs.

Chomsky, who has written many books on linguistics, philosophy and foreign policy, most recently "Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance," did not speak from notes or a prepared lecture, but began by recalling the top stories in the morning's paper - gunfights in Sadr City and Samarra in Iraq - and speaking tangentially about their root causes.

Chomsky traced the origin of the most recent uprising as a reprisal by militants for the U.S. invasion of Fallujah last April, which in turn, he said, was in retaliation for the brutal murder of four American contractors earlier in the year.

But Chomsky said this circle of violence began much earlier, noting those responsible for the Americans' deaths claimed they were from the "Martyrs of Sheik Yassin Brigade," who were avenging the death of their quadriplegic spiritual leader assassinated earlier outside of a mosque by the Israeli Defense Force using American military helicopters.

"Every act of violence elicits greater acts of violence ... elicits more hatred and frustration," Chomsky told the assembly, a packed room of approximately 350 students and administrators.

"This is a normal pattern, not just in this case, but in case after case. It can be anticipated and should be expected."

Chomsky occasionally broached subjects that were not altogether familiar to his audience. For instance, he credited Osama bin Laden's rise in popularity with Muslim extremists to the 1998 bombing of alleged al-Qaida sanctuaries in Sudan and Afghanistan - an event that occurred when some students were only 8 years old.

"When I'm speaking to an audience - [high] school or college students, adults, anyone - I try to remember how things would have sounded to me at their age. And I try to adjust for that, not really expecting them to know what I'm referring to, but trying to give enough information so that if they are curious about it, they can find out," Chomsky said later.

But students appeared to be engaged, asking insightful questions during a Q&A session that followed the 25-minute talk. One student asked, given that the U.S. is a "hotbed of controversy," why there have not been any major terrorist attacks on American soil since the Sept. 11 tragedy, while others asked how China could act as a future counterbalancing force to the U.S. in international influence; still others asked what can be done here at home to spark internal reform of foreign policy."

As always, [the questions posed by students] were very good: perceptive, relevant, thoughtful ... what I've come to expect from high school audiences, though I have to say that these students seemed to be unusually well informed, even by the standards of college audiences," Chomsky said.

After the talk, as the assembly cleared out of the auditorium, eight students lingered around to ask Chomsky some follow-up questions and listen to more of the professor's insight. The talk was not unusual for Beaver Country Day School, according to Abby Adair, the school's director of communications.

"BCDS host special guest speakers fairly frequently in an effort to extend beyond classroom experiences for students," Adair said, noting recent guest speakers include a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, a medical industry entrepreneur, an Emmy-award winning writer, a poet and a city councilor.