A reader writes:
I’ve been following your posts about Strauss with some interest. I spent some time at the University of Chicago and had some interaction with his followers, Joseph Cropsey and Nathan Tarcov. I agree with you that whatever sort of conservatism Strauss espoused, it cannot be equated with contemporary neo-conservatism.
That said, I think you make too big a deal out of the differences between Strauss and ‘the contemporary academy.’ People in general, but especially so-called movement conservatives have failed to notice that academia has largely moved on from the post-modern nonsense that was peddled in many elite departments in the 1980s. To take a few examples: political theory and philosophy is overwhelmingly liberal (with a small L). The dominant figure is John Rawls, who was a defender of classical liberal principles drawn from John Locke. These days, I see multicultural critiques of liberalism in retreat. Empirical political science has its share of po-mos, but they are rarely found in elite departments in the US. These are dominated by rational choice theory and neo-positivist methods, preferably with a statistical component. Economics essentially has no post-moderns, while Marxists are rare.
It is true that Anthropology remains a bastion of multi-culti b.s., but they are essentially alone in the social sciences. I know much less about humanities departments, but friends tell me that the French literary criticism wave passed long ago. English is returning to the close analysis of texts. Academic Philosophy is dominated by the Anglo-American school. Professional academics may be somewhat to the left of average Americans, but they are by no means outside the mainstream of liberal-democratic thought. My point is that Strauss is not such an outlier as you make him out to be, apart from some oddities of methodology (for instance, the search for ‘esoteric’ readings of ancient texts).
The Dish 