Noam Chomsky, to rehearse a cliché, is among the world’s greatest living radical intellectuals. It is no less trite or true to add that he is also a broadly controversial figure: accused from various corners of a variety of failings ranging from “genocide denial” to rigid, “amoral quietism” in the face of mass atrocities. Most recently, critics of dissimilar political hues claim to have identified a range of follies in his statements on Syria.

In the following interview, freelance journalist Emanuel Stoakes puts some of these criticisms to Chomsky.

While reasserting his opposition to full-scale military intervention, Chomsky says he does not in principle oppose the idea of a no-fly zone established alongside a humanitarian corridor (though Putin’s recent interventions have all but killed the possibility of the former option). Chomsky also clarifies his positions on the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and NATO’s 1999 intervention in Kosovo.