[lbo-talk] Shadia Drury: Straussian Sex Goddess

[Jeet Heer]

I don't know about all the gifts that Shadia Drury talks about, but I can
report that the general thrust of her statement (quoted below) is right.
When I was working on my article on Leo Strauss, I found that a number of
Straussians were had kind words about her first book on Strauss, although
they spoke off-the-record. Considering that her book basically protrays
Strauss as a closet nihilist and authoritarian, I found that pretty amazing.

mike larkin, quoting an interview with Shadia Drury
>
> Shadia Drury: I have been publicly denounced and
> privately adored. Following the publication of my book
> The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss in 1988, letters
> and gifts poured in from Straussian graduate students
> and professors all over North America - books,
> dissertations, tapes of Strauss's Hillel House
> lectures in Chicago, transcripts of every course he
> ever taught at the university, and even a personally
> crafted Owl of Minerva with a letter declaring me a
> goddess of wisdom! They were amazed that an outsider
> could have penetrated the secret teaching. They sent
> me unpublished material marked with clear instructions
> not to distribute to "suspicious persons.""
>