Friday, January 05, 2007

Fish Freedom

Stanley Fish's views on academic freedom have grown increasingly bizarre, as reflected in this report on a law school conference panel from InsideHigherEd:
Fish says, "The moment a professor tries to do something else [such as inject a political opinion], he is performing an action for which there should be no academic freedom.” There are two problems with this view: who do we trust with the absolute power to distinguish between a scholarly opinion and a political opinion? And why are political opinions deemed to be so horrible? What exactly is so dangerous about having political discussions in the classroom? Why does Fish think that the purpose of a university is to educate students about scholarly matters and nothing else?

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