He made no attempt to hide his bias, but I think the empowering part was he taught us a lot of truisms. Perhaps it was the first course I remember being taught in an adult manner.
I still remember one question he had - “How long is a treaty good for?” We went around the room for a long time on that one. Finally he told the the answer - “Until someone breaks it!”
Perhaps his teaching methods were the *result* of his political philosophy, instead of *in spite of* it.
There was/is a huge group of vaguely Marxist teachers who believed in “empowering” the masses. They tried to do it in two ways. One was “consciousness raising” - that was probably the political opinions you heard but rejected out of hand.
But the other was through providing the students tools. In History and Poli Sci, they’d teach basic knowledge of the government for instance, or how bills get passed. In the English Department, there was a lot of teaching of the rules of grammar. Even Rhetoric was seen as empowering - it teaches you to spot specious arguments. I guess they figured that people with raised consciousnesses would go out and use the tools “progressively.”
Your teacher sounds like he fell into that category. I personally think that it’s a lot more powerful to help students achieve mastery of tools, or of knowledge of systems, than to just fill them with pre-digested opinions to regurgitate, whether from the Left OR Right. Critical thinking skills are essential.