<p>I am a humanities kind of guy who likes the idea of a broad liberal arts education, so I think the University of Chicago may be a good fit for me. However, many big-name universities have heavily politicized humanities and social science departments, and I would like to avoid that, if possible. If I wanted a political harangue, I would read a blog, not go to college. Is U of C mostly free of that kind of stuff?</p>
<p>If you know what classes to take, you can completely avoid it. For example,</p>
<p>Hum
Greek Thought & Lit
Philosophical Perspectives</p>
<p>Sosc
Classics of Social & Political Thought</p>
<p>are going to be fairly objective. Some of the other classes (I took Self for Sosc), can be a Marxist-Freudian critical theory hard leftist field day.</p>
<p>Well, the idea of core (or my core class, at least, which was self) was to read each text generously-- you can't fight against it unless you understand it. There's nothing inherently political about reading Marx and Freud and trying to understand them, just as studying Hitler doesn't mean you agree with him!</p>
<p>(Godwin's law--ouch!)</p>
<p>Anyway, if OP is speaking less about intellectual leftism and more about current events leftism, I think that current events are fairly removed from most classes. One prof once asked his class to write an essay about what they thought Adam Smith would say about a host of current events, but in that case the basis of evaluation was not the prof's personal point of view, nor the student's, but rather the way they could draw out Adam Smith's arguments.</p>
<p>I can deal with that. I have no problems with studying Marx or Freud or even reading Mein Kampf for the purposes of broadening my intellectual experience. I just want to know that the professors will be able to live and let live with regards to people of different political stripes.</p>
<p>I took Greek Thought with a relatively famous rather professor and found him to be fairly objective - although rather snooty - in presenting his reading of the texts. The same went for Self, Culture and Society, despite our junior professor being a well known liberal in terms of the blogosphere. He bent over backwards to present the other side's argument, perhaps because he was not yet tenured. </p>
<p>However, where I found the "tolerance for others" element broke down was amongst the students themselves. There is some serious self-selection into each sequence by the more knowledgeable students (who will be the ones meaningfully contributing to class discussion), and in turn you find that the more traditional sequences like Classics, Greek Thought, and Human Being and Citizen tend have more centrist students (i.e. the average would be an Obama type Democrat), and at least some marginal representation of conservatives to create a dialogue. On the other hand, I felt that in Self, Culture and Society the professor spent a significant amount of time reigning in students who were trying to outdo each other in their leftist credentials. However, this kind of classroom dynamic is pretty much true at any elite university where you have serious discussion based classes (where people on not merely gunning for participation points).</p>
<p>
[quote]
Well, the idea of core (or my core class, at least, which was self) was to read each text generously-- you can't fight against it unless you understand it. There's nothing inherently political about reading Marx and Freud and trying to understand them, just as studying Hitler doesn't mean you agree with him!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I disagree. A reading list can be inherently political, and a Self reading list often is. Marcuse, Adorno, etc. are critical theorists/crackpots who offer little of merit to those who read them. I have no problem reading Marx and Freud; in fact, I enjoy reading them. But to say that our sociology department (and the field of sociology in general) is not skewed far left is a lie. And this, I believe, is to the detriment of the student</p>
<p>
[quote]
Marcuse, Adorno, etc. are critical theorists/crackpots who offer little of merit to those who read them.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Okay, I agree that they're kinda nutty, but that's a big ouch!</p>
<p>I see what you mean in that sociology (and anthropology) are fields that can lend themselves to "leftism" or what I consider to be "hyper-sensitive interpretation." When everything starts getting boiled down to similar terms (cultural hegemony, gender, race, etc. etc. etc.) it can get a little tiresome. But I think that's what sociology and anthropology are about. If you prefer a more "conservative" approach to the social sciences that doesn't examine cultural hegemony and instead focuses more on traditional cause and effect, cultural artifact, etc. perhaps cut-and-dried history is the way to go.</p>
<p>Styles of academic examination fade in and out (mostly out), and PhD candidates need to write something to put food on their tables. While Chicago has a lot of PhD candidates who are chasing down and writing in the trendy styles, they offer a wide range of courses in different time periods and offer different academic viewpoints along with what's current.</p>
<p>Oh, and I also meant to post this article, written by an English prof at Rutgers, which is worth skimming:</p>
<p>The</a> crisis in scholarly publishing | Public Interest | Find Articles at BNET</p>
<p>Cesare, you are a smart guy, but sometimes your arrogance blows me away. Adorno and Marcuse "crackpots"? You are so utterly knowledgeable about EVERYTHING that you can pass judgment that way?</p>
<p>My mentors in college were fairly well recognized as political conservatives, and certainly they were in the context of their field (English, comp lit). They assigned quite a bit of Adorno (and Lukacs, not so much Marcuse). The fact of the matter is that between, say, the 1920s and the 1980s, there was no serious high-level social or aesthetic theory in continental Europe that wasn't presented in a Marxian context (just as, between roughly 400 and the 1600s, there was hardly anything of value that was not presented in an equally crackpot Christian context). It's your loss if you can't glean things of value from materials that don't conform to your actually very limited worldview.</p>
<p>The hardest class is English 21200. by far.</p>
<p>is that even a real class?</p>