Full Name Gad Horowitz Name Gad Horowitz | Occupation Political scientist Nationality Canadian Role Political Scientist | |
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Books Canadian labour in politics | ||
Gad Horowitz (born 1936 in Jerusalem) is a Canadian political scientist. He is a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto.
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Biography
Horowitz was born in Jerusalem and immigrated to Canada with his parents at the age of 2. He grew up in Calgary, Winnipeg, and Montreal.
Horowitz earned his BA from the University of Manitoba. He earned his MA from McGill University in 1959, writing his thesis on "Mosca and Mills: Ruling Class and Power Elite". He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1965, writing his thesis on "Canadian Labor in Politics: The trade unions and the CCF-NDP, 1937-62", with Sam Beer as his advisor.
Horowitz has specialised in labour theory, and most notably coined the appellation "Red Tory" in his application of Louis Hartz's "fragment theory" to Canadian political culture and ideological development, in his essay "Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism in Canada: An Interpretation" (in the Canadian Journal of Political Science, 32, 2 (1966): 143–71). The use of this appellation differentiates traditional Canadian Toryism from the powerful classical liberal elements that began to emerge in the Conservative Party after World War II, but it has applications to conservative parties in other countries where "Tory" acceptance of state enterprises, the welfare state, and other institutions seen as expressions of national character conflicts with "liberal" or "neoliberal" rejection of state intervention in the economy.
Horowitz was a member of the editorial board of Canadian Dimension in its early days, and a frequent contributor to that magazine.
Horowitz teaches a class at the University of Toronto entitled "The Spirit of Democratic Citizenship" which revolves around general semantics, a non-Aristotelian educational discipline first theorized by Polish engineer Alfred Korzybski.