Quote:
Originally Posted by peter12
Haha, notorious? I'm going to guess you have only read the Walrus article by Marci MacDonald and formed your opinion on that basis.
Flanagan and Cooper are easily the two best profs in the department. World-class minds by any standard.
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They're smart guys, for sure. But they're also arch-conservatives. Not many people deny that.
On the other hand, I think it's important to note that academic culture does select for liberals also. The academy is a place where it does matter who you agree with, and academics in the social sciences and humanities (outside of the U of C) are often politically liberal academic marxists. They tend to hire people who think as they do on political issues--it's an unfortunate fact of life.
There isn't enough diversity of political viewpoints in most departments, and even though I'm a liberal myself I think students are the worse off for it. Universities should be places that encourage freedom of thought--I think most people involved in higher education would agree. That's hard when most of the top scholars represent only one political viewpoint.