A Tribute to Neal Wood

Frances Abele, George Comninel, and David McNally have written about the life of Neal Wood who founded the Graduate Program of Social and Political Thought at York University and influenced generations of scholars with his commitment to socialism and his intellectual rigour. Wood applied a social-historical approach to the study of political thought, especially the study of liberalism, acknowledging its achievements while probing its limitations, particularly its class blindness and callousness toward the poor. He, too, was concerned with "the practice of political theory and the analysis of the most urgent political matters of our time."