I looked up Donna Ellard on
Rice's website . It should be noted that she is an English professor, specializing in medieval literature and Old English; She is not in the field of psychology, nor sociology or political science for that matter.
I was a psychology major and can tell you that by and large most modern psychologists think of a Freud as a big joke. Most of his theories have not been supported by empirical evidence and quite a few have plenty evidence that contradicts them. Unfortunately they still teach about Freud in most intro psychology courses, because of the belief that everyone should know it since he was so influential on the development of psychotherapy. In my opinion, this would be akin to them teaching alchemy in an intro chemistry course or astrology in an astronomy / astrophysics course… I think they should save Freud for a history of psychology course so that all the students who only take one intro psych course aren't exposed to that nonsense.
Of course there are still psychoanalysts who believe in Freud's theories as if they were an infallible religious doctrine. I (unfortunately) took a psychoanalysis class where the prof would say things like "A lot of psychology professors are too hung up on numbers and statistics… If something works, you can just tell it works". He claimed that while Freud / psychoanalysis is nearly dead in academia, it was still very popular in the realm of therapy. However, he didn't provide any statistics to back this up…
Anyway, I am curious why some of you are so convinced that Prof. Ellard is advancing a leftist political viewpoint in this class. Is this mostly based on the presumption that "all university professors are liberals".? From the article here we only have one statement from her:
"[Skyrim] comes in a world post-9/11. [This] was a moment in which the US started to realise it was an empire on the rocks and its popularity through the beginning of the 2000s very much corresponded both to its insecurities as a nation and as an empire that recognised itself as no longer the tour de force that it thought it was,” said Ellard.
Exactly what about that statement is necessarily leftist? Is simply referring to the USA as an empire automatically make her a "leftwing nutjob" in your eyes? Or are you suggesting that anyone who is politically moderate or conservative is so delusional that they still believe the US (more specifically the United States government and military) is an unstoppable superpower that can do no wrong? And here I thought conservatives didn't like / trust the federal government.
I will grant you that it seems unlikely that a right-wing war monger would make such a statement, but I don't see why a Libertarian or political moderate (i.e., anyone who believes in an Isolationist foreign policy) would take issue with it.