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Clifford Orwin is a Canadian scholar of ancient, modern, contemporary and Jewish political thought.

Academic career

He has an in A.B. in Modern History (Cornell University), and M.A., Ph.D. in Political Philosophy (Harvard University). He is a Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Toronto, where he has taught for more than twenty five years. He is often identified as a Straussian.

He has held Guggenheim and NEH Fellowships, has been a Fellow at the Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Ethics in Leadership, and in 2003 he received the school's Outstanding Teaching Award. He has written and translated articles on Herodotus, Montesquieu, Churchill, Plato, Charles Taylor, American religion, and humanitarian military intervention.

His current book project is on the role of compassion in modern political thought and practice, and he is also contemplating a study of the Book of Esther. He describes Rousseau as "the modern philosopher with whom I'm most familiar".

Controversy

He is often asked to speak at student events. Debating Canada's role in Afghanistan at Hart House in 2006 he was interrupted by a small demonstration.

Teaching

The Chair of the University of Toronto Political Science department has said of him: "If there is another observation to be made or argument to be explored or interpretation to be developed, Cliff wants to hear it."

He has written of his teaching method: "My methods harken back to an older kind of warfare: "Don't teach until you see the whites of their eyes." Eye-to-eye teaching resembles hand-to-hand combat. Teacher and student struggle, and if they're lucky both lose -- each is compelled to learn from the other. It's not a relation of equals, and teachers who pretend that it is should find another calling, like talk show host. But neither is the role of the student passive."

Notes

1. See this essay from May 2006 on Leo Strauss; Orwin is concerned to argue against identification of Strauss as a neoconservative, and other positions.
2. See this review for an attribution of the influence of Strauss's The City and the Man.

External links

• Profile from the University of Toronto Teaching Awards page
• Article on teaching from the National Post
• Profile from the Sheldon M. Chumire Foundation

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