A list of required reading for aspiring political scientists
Re: Freedom of expression and academic freedom — March 23
Political science Prof. Thomas Hueglin introduces a startling revelation, that academic freedom at Wilfrid Laurier University means a professor has the right to decide what he or she wants to teach his or her students.
Is there no job description for professors, no mandatory course material and no basic curriculum of what the students should learn?
In political science, it is important to convey to students that there are no right or wrong political opinions, only different opinions. Or as the German statesman Otto von Bismarck, the father of the German nation, put it: “Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best.” However, as it is often said, “politics is the art of compromise.”
I would suggest that mandatory readings for a future political science degree, apart from the writings of Karl Marx, ought to include “The Political Writings” by Richard Cobden, Adam Smith’s “The Theory of Moral Sentiments” and, of course, Smith’s more famous “The Wealth of Nations,” Margaret MacMillan’s “Versailles,” William L. Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” and more recent; and Roland Huntford’s “The New Totalitarians.” The main thesis of Huntford’s book is that the Swedish government relied less upon the violence and intimidation of the old totalitarians than upon sly persuasion and soft manipulation in order to achieve its goals. The influence of the state and official ideology were the most visible in the most private of matters, where little or no consciously “political” control had stretched before.
At the time, Sweden was a nation under the yoke of the Social Democratic Party of Sweden, which had ruled the country for more than 40 years. Huntford argues that this led to the complete dominance of socialist thought at all levels of the government, including the bureaucracy and the judiciary, which were all controlled by a powerful interconnecting network of Social Democratic labour unions, lobby groups, and partisan organizations. He also points to the fact that these networks made it very difficult for nonsocialists to achieve any position of real power in Sweden, not only in the government bureaucracy but also in major corporations.
Ulf Svensson
Waterloo