Lunches with Louis
Publishing a book requires, as they say in the writing world, the killing off some of your darlings. In the name of shorter attention spans, so shorter books, I have to let this one go. Still, Louis Kampf, a mensch amongst mensches, will make a few appearances in my book, Chomsky and Me. Louis brought progressive movements to life. The Cambridge hospice where he decided to live out his life closed its doors to visitors the morning of my planned visit in late April of 2020, weeks before he passed away. I had been lucky enough to share lunch with him every two months during his last few years. His time at MIT began in 1959, and mine in 1979. Louis audited Noam’s Philosophy of Mind course in the late 1960s, after which they became friends. In the 1970s they ran two undergrad courses independent of MIT’s conservative Political Science Department: “Intellectuals and Social Change,” and “Contemporary Issues in Politics and Ideology.” Louis was one of the founders, a decade later, of MIT’s
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