in 1967. In the first, he wrote that he had "given a good bit of thought to ... resigning from MIT, which is, more than any other university associated with the activities of the Department of 'Defense'." He also stated that MIT's "involvement in the [Vietnam] war effort is tragic and indefensible." Then, in the second letter written to clarify the first, Chomsky said that "MIT as an institution has no involvement in the war effort. Individuals at MIT, as elsewhere, have direct involvement and that is what I had in mind." By 1969, MIT's student activists were actively campaigning "to stop the war research" at MIT. Chomsky was sympathetic to the students but disagreed with their immediate aims. In opposition to the radical students, he argued that it was best to keep military research on campus rather than having it moved away. Against the students' campaign to close down all war-related research, he argued for restricting such research to "systems of a purely defensive and deterrent character". MIT's student president at this time, Michael Albert, has described this position as, in effect, "preserving war research with modest amendments". During this period, MIT had six students sentenced to prison terms, prompting Chomsky to say that MIT's students suffered things that "should not have happened". Despite this, he has described MIT as "the freest and the most honest and has the best relations between faculty and students than at any other ... [with] quite a good record on civil liberties." Chomsky's differences with student activists at this time led to what he has called "considerable conflict". He described the rebellions across US campuses as "largely misguided" and he was unimpressed by the student uprising of May 1968 in Paris, saying, "I paid virtually no attention to what was going on in Paris as you can see from what I – rightly, I think." On the other hand, Chomsky was also very grateful to the students for raising the issue of the war in Vietnam. Chomsky's particular interpretation of academic freedom led him to give support to some of MIT's more militaristic academics, even though he disagreed with their actions. For example, in 1969, when he heard that Walt Rostow, a major architect of the Vietnam war, wanted to return to work at the university, Chomsky threatened "to protest publicly" if Rostow was "denied a position at MIT." In 1989, Chomsky then