Whilst
Save the World on Your Own Time,[1]
penned by Stanley Fish, is neither a pleasure to read nor is it by no means an
easy to categorise. Fish, currently the Floerscheimer Distinguished Professor
of Law at Cardozo Law School, provides his audience with a cleverly
provocative read. The professor articulately crafts each verse with an
abundance of insight. Despite this eloquently lavish beginning, there is no
denying what Fish has penned is difficult to review. As a certain Walter
Benjamin once uttered, “the gesture remains the decisive thing, the center of the
event,” and the gesture “tears open the sky behind” it. The act of reviewing
Fish is akin to pulling teeth. One could argue a certain degree of indifference
is required before one can fully appreciate what it is the professor has
presented us with. I should, from the beginning, point out that my fully
conforming to APA style is never going to happen. I write the way I write
because that is the way I write. It is what it is.
Professors
engaged in higher education, as I understand it from Fish’s writing, are
essentially hired to perform certain academic functions. The fundamentals, as
detailed in Fish’s work, are accurate in the extreme. Professors, as Fish puts
it, are not engaged in the capacity of “moralists, therapists, political theorists,
and agents of global change.” Fish insists the position professors have
undertaken is purely scholarly.
The
principle Fish is alluding to, one of academic freedom, does not necessarily
pertain to nor directly concern individual rights to freedom of speech analogous
to that which is fundamentally protected by the First Amendment. Academic
freedom, according to the reading, is more about “the freedom to do one’s
academic job without interference from external constituencies like
legislators, boards of trustees, donors, and even parents.”[2]
In
Fish’s writing, there are remembrances of the Declaration of Principles: Academic
Freedom and Academic Tenure.[3]
Declaration of Principles: Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure, a
milestone in American academics, “in short, not the absolute freedom of
utterance of the individual scholar, but the absolute freedom of thought, of
inquiry, of discussion and of teaching, of the academic profession, that is
asserted by this declaration of principles.”[4]
Are
there fundamental points we can use to gleam valuable information from? Fish
seems to think so. Based on the reading, it is impossible to garner anything
from Fish’s work without becoming a tad indignant. Fish evidentially believes
that if professors were to solely focus on what it is they are supposed to
cover in the classroom, politics will somehow be excluded. Interestingly, as
previously mentioned, Fish is currently the Floerscheimer Distinguished
Professor of Law at Cardozo Law School. Holding this position should
indicate at least a modicum of common sense. The evidence indicates otherwise. The
professor somehow feels universities are upholders of left-wing indoctrination.
The professor needs to get out more. Either that or do some research on
academic institutions such as Baylor University (Waco, TX), Bob Jones
University (Greenville, SC), College of William and Mary (Williamsburg,
VA) and DePauw University (Greencastle, IN). These campuses are anything but bastions
of left-wing indoctrination.
Fish’s
position is abundantly clear. He believes professors abuse their position. According
to Fish, professors are there to transmit knowledge and or skills. Someone
should seriously consider welcoming the Cardozo Law School professor to the twenty-first
century. The professor has failed to comprehend that, in this current century,
things might be a tad different to the one he hails from. As previously
intimated, virtually anything can be controversial. Fish is arguing, not that
this is actually a real possibility, political controversy can easily be avoided.
As
you can see from what has been written thus far, there is no way this graduate
student is going to find anything positive about Fish’s work. Fish puts his
viewpoints across as if making commandments. Fish imagines, if imagines can be
the right word, higher education modelled on a graduate school. At least, that
is the impression this graduate student gets from what has been read.
Contrary
to what Fish is arguing, there is more to graduate level education than the transmission
of existing professional knowledge. For some graduate schools, the transmission
of existing professional knowledge is not part of what it is the school requires.
Research heavy graduate schools, for example, require their students to conduct
original research. This is essentially the exact opposite to what it is Fish
advocates.
[1] Fish, Stanley Eugene. Save
the World on Your Own Time. (New
York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2008).
[2] Fish. Save the World on Your Own Time. (2008): 80.
[3] Seligman, Edwin R. A., Charles E. Bennett, James Q. Dealey,
Richard T. Ely, Henry W. Farnam, Frank A. Fetter, Franklin H. Giddings, et al.
‘The 1915 Declaration of Principles: Academic Freedom and Tenure.’ Bulletin of the American
Association of University Professors 40, no. 1 (1954).
[4] Association
of University Professors, Declaration of
Principles: Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure (1915) [hereinafter 1915 Declaration], reprinted in Policy
Documents and Reports. App. l at 291,293 (10th ed. 2006)
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