Are today's students apathetic? Have they lost the spark of activism and commitment that fired so many demos and sit-ins in the 1960s and 1970s? Not a bit of it, according to veteran journalist and campaigner John Pilger.

Pilger visits Kingston University on Tuesday to give a public lecture, and his message will be that while students are browbeaten by talk of jobs and insecurity they are angry underneath, and looking for ways to express it.

"Because the propaganda says 'apathy' over and over again doesn't mean you have to fall for it," he said. "There are plenty of ways to take direct political action."

The 69-year-old is probably Britain's most controversial journalist as well as its most decorated - in a career that has taken him from Cambodia to Bolivia and from Palestine to East Timor he has won almost every award going for his writing and TV documentaries.

His talk, entitled Journalism, Power and Propaganda, is likely to take in his strong opposition to the invasion of Iraq and to US and British foreign policy generally.

All too often, he says, what the west does in the world's poorer countries is no better than colonialism.

John Pilger's lecture is free and open to the public.

It starts at 6pm Tuesday at Jacqueline Wilson Hall, Kingston University's Penrhyn Road campus.