Shadia Drury
Shadia B. Drury (1950-) is a Canadian academic and political commentator. She is Canada Research Chair in Social Justice at the University of Regina, in Regina, Saskatchewan, the Provincial capital of Saskatchewan, Canada.
Education
Drury was educated at York University, earning her undergraduate, graduate and terminal degrees at the comprehensive university founded in 1959 and begun in 1960 with a class of 76 students in a rented building, Falconer Hall, now part of the Faculty of Law, on the University of Toronto campus.
York grew to be known for its Faculty of Arts and Social Science during the 1960s and 1970s, as it struggled to find an academic identity on a desolate campus in North York, Ontario. Today it has the third largest population of students in Canada, and a number of esteemed faculties, including Osgoode Hall Law School (1969) and Schulich School of Business (1966). The growing demographics of Canada's largest city pulled the one time distant campus to the edge of a still growing metropolis. Drury graduated in 1978 with a Ph.D. in Political Science. Her thesis was titled the The Concept of Natural Law.
Academic Interests
Professor Drury has taught Political Science and Philosophy at two western Canadian universities, first at the University of Calgary, and presently at the University of Regina, where she holds the Canada Research Chair in Social Justice. This position is one of two thousand Research Chairs offered to academics by the Canadian federal governemnt to stimulate and further a national strategy to make Canada one of the world's top five countries for research and development. Her objective in the position is to undertake an extensive publishing program, which includes books on St. Thomas Aquinas' theory of justice and its relation to the current Darwinian trends, a critique of the rise of populism in Canada, Tradition and Taboo an analysis of the liberal and conservative approaches to tradition, and a book on the relationship between Western liberalism and the growth of radical feminism.
Professor Drury has stated her aim as an interdisciplinary social scientist is to temper enthusiasm for social ideals and values that are taken too seriously and thus threaten moderation and justice. In her opinion, when society starts to believe that its ideals and values are "worthy of every sacrifice, every hardship and every abomination", moderation and justice is threatened. Accordingly, much of her writing is aimed at a debunking, or attempt at critiquing, extreme political views, as she sees them.
The Straussians
Evidently, Drury thinks that contemporary society is threatened by a small school of American academics labeled Straussians, after the German born, Jewish-American Political Scientist, Leo Strauss (1899-1973). She has not shied away from voicing a strident and simplified interpretation of Strauss' work, and linking it blindly to American right-wing public policy. In print and on the airwaves (CBC Radio interview), she has stated that Straussians are a 'cult', a group of dangerous men who need to be exposed and analyzed in terms of not what they say, but what they don't. Much of her most popular work is a 'psychological' analysis of the typical 'Straussian' graduate student and professor, which is similar methodology once employed by German psycho-sociologist, Theodor Adorno, to explain the 'authorative personalities' who sided with Hitler and the German Nazi regime
Current Ideological Battles
Drury has produced a body of work on the impact of Leo Strauss which has placed her in the position of authority for many students, academics and media personalities who have little or no experience reading Strauss' own words. In so doing, she has garnered a rather controversial position in American politics. Her latest book departs from any one thinker and examines what she calls "two equally arrogant and self-righteous civilizations confronting one another". In Terror and Civilization: Christianity, Politics, and the Western Psyche, Drury regards the contemporary political problem as "thoroughly Biblical." "Each (civilization) is convinced that it is on the side of God, truth and justice, while its enemy is allied with Satan, wickedness, and barbarism." What side Drury comes from is not examined and one may reasonably ask how she got to her perspective.
Impact of Western Canadian Politics
It is worth noting that Drury is an academic from Western Canada, the region of the country most sharply divided by right-wing and left-wing ideology. Canada is a nation deeply affected by regionalism, and specific attitudes, public opinions, manners and mores as well as political parties have developed in separate regions. In the provinces Drury has taught in, first Alberta and now Saskatchewan, one can reasonably argue that the most entrenched right-wing (Alberta) and the most entrenched left-wing (Saskatchewan) provincial governments in Canada hold electoral domination. The much discussed 'Blue State-Red State' dichotomy found throughout the United States most closely applies in Canada to the Prairie Provinces. Drury has been active in publicly countering right-wing Conservative Party advisors employed at the University of Calgary, and she often tries to lump together American right-wing policy with the Alberta bred Reform Party-Canadian Alliance Party, which as late as May 2005 was close to gaining federal power in it's latest manifestation -- the Conservative Party of Canada.
List of Works
- The Concept of Natural Law, Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 1978. Canadian Theses Division, National Library, Ottawa, Canadiana: 790230615
- Law and Politics: Readings in Legal and Political Thought. Edited with introduction and essay by Shadia B. Drury ; associate editor, Rainer Knopff. Calgary: Detselig, 1980. ISBN: 0920490123
- The Political Thought of Leo Strauss, Revised Edition. New York: St. Martin's Press,(originally published in 1988) 2005.
- Alexandre Kojeve: The Roots of Postmodern Politics. Palgrave Macmillan. 1994. ISBN: 0312120923
- Leo Strauss and the American Right. Palgrave Macmillan. 1999. ISBN: 0312217838
- Terror and Civilization: Christianity, Politics, and the Western Psyche. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004 ISBN: 1403964041
- Professor Drury's web page has a great number of links to her work, including many full text articles that are downloadable, as well as link to a CBC Radio interview. http://www.uregina.ca/arts/CRC/
Bibliography
- Canada. Canada Research Chairs. (web site) avialable online[1] 5 August 2005.
- Christian, William. George Grant: A Biography. University of Toronto Press: Toronto, 1993. ISBN: 0802059228
- Drury, Shadia B. Alexandre Kojeve: The Roots of Postmodern Politics. Palgrave Macmillan: London, 1994. ISBN: 0312120923
- Drury, Shadia B. The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss. 1st ed. Macmillan: London, 1988. ISBN: 0333412567
- Drury, Shadia B. Leo Strauss and the American Right. Palgrave Macmillan: London, 1999. ISBN: 0312217838
- Drury, Shadia B. Terror and Civilization: Christianity, Politics, and the Western Psyche. Palgrave Macmillan: London, 2004. ISBN: 1403964041
- Grant, George, Parkin. English-speaking Justice (with an introduction by Robin Lathangue. Anansi: Toronto, 1998 (c1974) ISBN: 0-88784-622x