![CliffordOrwinCropped](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/CliffordOrwinCropped.jpg)
Clifford Orwin is a
Canadian-American
Canadian Americans is a term that can be applied to American citizens whose ancestry is wholly or partly Canadian, or citizens of either country that hold dual citizenship.
The term ''Canadian'' can mean a nationality or an ethnicity. Canadia ...
professor of ancient, modern, contemporary and Jewish political thought. He is also a prominent
writer
A writer is a person who uses written words in different writing styles and techniques to communicate ideas. Writers produce different forms of literary art and creative writing such as novels, short stories, books, poetry, travelogues, p ...
on contemporary politics and culture.
Life career
Orwin was born in 1947 in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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,
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockf ...
,
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
to a Jewish family. He earned B.A. in Modern History from
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...
, where he studied political philosophy with
Allan Bloom, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Philosophy from
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
under
Harvey Mansfield
Harvey Claflin Mansfield Jr. (born March 21, 1932) is an American political philosophy, political philosopher. He is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Government at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1962. He has held Guggenheim F ...
.
Orwin moved to Canada to take up a teaching position at the University of Toronto, and later became a Canadian citizen. He is currently a Professor of Political Philosophy, Classical Studies and Jewish Studies at the
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 ...
, where he has taught for many decades and where he currently serves as Chair of the
Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy's program in Political Philosophy and International Affairs.
He is often identified as a
Straussian and is critical of theories that identify
Leo Strauss with neoconservatism and the War in Iraq. He supports the Democratic Party, but is critical of its left wing.
He has held a
Guggenheim Fellowship and an
NEH Fellowship
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...
. He 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 is also a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.
Multilingual, he can speak English and French and read Hebrew, Latin and Ancient Greek.
Writing
He has written and translated articles on
Herodotus
Herodotus ( ; grc, , }; BC) was an ancient Greek historian and geographer
A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society ...
,
Thucydides
Thucydides (; grc, , }; BC) was an Athenian historian and general. His '' History of the Peloponnesian War'' recounts the fifth-century BC war between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 BC. Thucydides has been dubbed the father of " scienti ...
,
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
,
Machiavelli,
Montesquieu
Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (; ; 18 January 168910 February 1755), generally referred to as simply Montesquieu, was a French judge, man of letters, historian, and political philosopher.
He is the princi ...
,
Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from 1 ...
,
Charles Taylor, American religion, and
humanitarian military intervention. His books are ''The Humanity of Thucydides'' (1994), and ''The Legacy of Rousseau'' (1997) edited with Nathan Tarcov.
He projects a book on the role of compassion in modern political thought and practice, and a study of the ''
Book of Esther''. He describes
Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (, ; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolu ...
as "the modern philosopher with whom I'm most familiar".
Controversy
He is often asked to speak at student events. When debating
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
's role in
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
at the University of Toronto's
Hart House in 2006, he was interrupted by a small demonstration.
He writes both
polemical
Polemic () is contentious rhetoric intended to support a specific position by forthright claims and to undermine the opposing position. The practice of such argumentation is called ''polemics'', which are seen in arguments on controversial topics ...
and
philosophical
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
columns for ''
The Globe and Mail
''The Globe and Mail'' is a Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of approximately 2 million in 2015, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays, although it ...
'' and ''
National Post
The ''National Post'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet newspaper available in several cities in central and western Canada. The paper is the flagship publication of Postmedia Network and is published Mondays through Saturdays, with ...
''.
He is a director of
Energy Probe
Energy Probe is a non-governmental social, economic, and environmental policy organization based in Toronto, Canada known for denying man-made climate change.
It was founded in 1970 as a sister project of Pollution Probe. In 1980, the two organi ...
Research Foundation, an anti-nuclear environmental organization based in Toronto.
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."
A number of Orwin's students have become teachers and scholars themselves in a range of disciplines. These include: Norman Doidge, a psychiatrist with affiliations at the University of Toronto and Columbia Medical School; Janis Freedman Bellow (the widow of Nobel Laureate author Saul Bellow) who lectures in English at Tufts University; Robert Howse, a professor of international law and legal and political theorist at NYU Law School who also has a research affiliation with the University of Paris I (Pantheon-Sorbonne); Christina Tarnopolsky, a political science professor at McGill University who formerly taught in the Government Department at Harvard; and Nathan Busch, a political science professor at Christopher Newport University, and helped develop the Center for American Studies at Christopher Newport. His son, Alexander Orwin, is a professor of political science at Louisiana State University.
Notes
External links
Profile from the University of Toronto Teaching Awards page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Orwin, Clifford
Living people
Canadian people of Jewish descent
Cornell University alumni
University of Toronto faculty
Harvard University alumni
1947 births