Nice, smart teacher.
Although he is seriously intelligent, he isn't pretentious or on a constant ego trip. Friendly guy who clearly loves philosophy. The class usually begins with Anubav bringing up a question he finds interesting and relevant to the reading, and then the omnipresent philosophy majors have at it. Then slowly the less well-versed students trickle into the discussion as Anubav defines determinism, free will, etc. on the board. While this structure might seem kind of... flabby and formless, Anubav has a pretty good rein on the discussion and he can deconstruct your and the authors' arguments quickly and accurately - i.e., we're constantly asked to explain and justify our views, and if we do go off-topic, then we at least cover into interesting topics relevant to philosophy, if not the text (e.g. we learned Zeno's Paradox).
Break it down:
- Fair grader, you could even say lenient.
- Paper topics are thought provoking. He really wants you to synthesize your own arguments in response to the authors - this can be frustrating, especially as other classes are making more literary and historical papers, but useful and more interesting in the long run.
- He doesn't flip out if the class hasn't done the reading. Pretty refreshing and it makes the teacher-student relationship much less adversarial that it could be.
- Tangents. Oh, the tangents. We spent an hour and fifteen minutes discussing whether or not it was reasonable that medical schools expelled students with DUI's. Fun discussion. Relevant to Hobbes? Not really.