Chomsky gave up on linguistics because he discovered that language could not be broken down into syllables of sound that would have universal meaning, as economists had done in reducing material transactions to numerical values. Economics and linguistics are both referred to as social science, wrongly because neither is predictive and repeatable. Social systems are, like the weather, dynamic–infinitely variable, regardless of how much humans want things to stay the same.
“Student activism” is mostly a topic because the legislators of the civil rights era expected no change in the educational system where “in loco parentis” still reigned. That is, they expected the electorate to remain largely apathetic and follow the direction of the family’s head. Single mothers were decried.
I might add that as the child of a single parent, I had an interest in the attitude.
Also, I took two coursesin linguistics at Georgetown University in the summer of ’62.