More Drury on Strauss

This is a text version of a talk Drury had on Strauss with Michael Enright of the CBC. It's worth reading in it's entirety.

Money quote:

"ME: Do you, in your studies, have you seen any impact of any evidence of Straussian influence in the political landscape of Canada?

SD: Only insofar as Strauss has influenced the Neo-Conservatives. Neo-Conservatism is a rising phenomena certainly Neo-Conservatism is the inspiration behind the Reform & Alliance Party. Now it is a component, but not the entire part, of what is now the Conservative Party in Canada. It’s an American import, Neo-Conservatism. We like to Canadianize it and call it the Calgary School, but it’s really the same old thing. Some of the Straussians in Canada, and there are a lot of Straussians in Canada, it’s a big phenomena in Canada. Whenever I travel in the States and give lectures, people always ask me how it is that a Canadian came to write the only two books that are critical of analysis of Leo Strauss. The answer is simple—Alan Bloom, who was Strauss’ most famous disciple, who wrote The Closing of the American Mind, spent most of his academic career at the University of Toronto which produces 90% of the Ph.D.’s in Canada. As a result, there are Straussians in every University in Canada."


At the U of C in my time you couldn't swing a dead hamster without clubbing a Straussian.

By my modest suspicion there are at least 5 and those are just the profs I had a reasonable suspicion of (cuz afterall, it's not like they wear signs or labels that indicate it).