In the last few years, numerous books and articles have appeared that seek to vindicate in the face of attack the German Jewish political thinker Leo Strauss (1889–1973) and his disciples. One such defender, Peter Minowitz, recently published a work aimed at Strauss’s detractors, Straussophobia. In the first chapter, which sets the stage for later assaults or counterassaults, Minowitz lets it be known that “All hate Leo Strauss.” The rest of the book is commentary on this allegedly widespread, unjustified prejudice. What Minowitz cites in the text and endnotes would suggest in any case that neither Strauss nor his followers are winning academic popularity contests.

Straussophobia was published three years after the appearance of an earlier and denser apologetic work, The Truth about Leo Strauss: Political Philosophy and American Democracy, by Michael and Catherine H. Zuckert, two former students of Leo Strauss who are now professors of political theory at Notre Dame University. The Zuckerts set out to demonstrate two key points, the first of which is also broached by Minowitz: (1) Leo Strauss and his followers are innocent of the charge that the political Left has leveled against them, of being antidemocratic elitists; and (2) the Straussians and neoconservatives, contrary to the customary association, have separate identities. The Zuckerts insist that although the Straussians are tireless advocates of American democracy, they are not political activists in the same way as the neoconservatives. The Zuckerts portray the Straussians as true scholars who should not be equated with government advisors and certainly not with political journalists.