Was he really a Liberal Arts Dean???


>From: Enid Arvidson <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Center for Theory <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: FW: Why We Built the Ivory Tower
>Date: Fri, 21 May 2004 12:21:09 -0500
>
>Does anyone think there is something fish-y about this op-ed piece?
>
>
>The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: Why We Built the Ivory
>Tower
><http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/21/opinion/21FISH.html?th=&pagewanted=print&
>position=>
>
>
>May 21, 2004
>OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
>
>Why We Built the Ivory Tower
>By STANLEY FISH
>
>
>CHICAGO
>
>After nearly five decades in academia, and five and a half years as a
>dean at a public university, I exit with a three-part piece of wisdom
>for those who work in higher education: do your job; don't try to do
>someone else's job, as you are unlikely to be qualified; and don't let
>anyone else do your job. In other words, don't confuse your academic
>obligations with the obligation to save the world; that's not your job
>as an academic; and don't surrender your academic obligations to the
>agenda of any non-academic constituency — parents, legislators, trustees
>or donors. In short, don't cross the boundary between academic work and
>partisan advocacy, whether the advocacy is yours or someone else's.
>
>Marx famously said that our job is not to interpret the world, but to
>change it. In the academy, however, it is exactly the reverse: our job
>is not to change the world, but to interpret it. While academic labors
>might in some instances play a role in real-world politics — if, say,
>the Supreme Court cites your book on the way to a decision — it should
>not be the design or aim of academics to play that role.
>
>While academics in general will agree that a university should not dance
>to the tune of external constituencies, they will most likely resist the
>injunction to police the boundary between academic work and political
>work. They will resist because they simply don't believe in the boundary
>— they believe that all activities are inherently political, and an
>injunction to avoid politics is meaningless and futile.
>
>  Now there is some truth to that, but it is not a truth that goes very
>far. And it certainly doesn't go where those who proclaim it would want
>it to go. It is true that no form of work — including even the work of,
>say, natural science — stands apart from the political, social and
>economic concerns that underlie the structures and practices of a
>society. This does not mean, however, that there is no difference
>between academic labors and partisan labors, or that there is no
>difference between, for example, analyzing the history of welfare reform
>— a history that would necessarily include opinions pro and con — and
>urging students to go out and work for welfare reform or for its
>reversal.
>
>  Analyzing welfare reform in an academic context is a political action
>in the sense that any conclusion a scholar might reach will be one
>another scholar might dispute. (That, after all, is what political
>means: subject to dispute.) But such a dispute between scholars will not
>be political in the everyday sense of the word, because each side will
>represent different academic approaches, not different partisan agendas.
>
>
>  My point is not that academics should refrain from being political in
>an absolute sense — that is impossible — but that they should engage in
>politics appropriate to the enterprise they signed onto. And that means
>arguing about (and voting on) things like curriculum, department
>leadership, the direction of research, the content and manner of
>teaching, establishing standards — everything that is relevant to the
>responsibilities we take on when we accept a paycheck. These
>responsibilities include meeting classes, keeping up in the discipline,
>assigning and correcting papers, opening up new areas of scholarship,
>and so on.
>
>  This is a long list, but there are many in academia who would add to it
>the larger (or so they would say) tasks of "forming character" and
>"fashioning citizens." A few years ago, the presidents of nearly 500
>universities issued a declaration on the "Civic Responsibility of Higher
>Education." It called for colleges and universities to take
>responsibility for helping students "realize the values and skills of
>our democratic society."
>
>  Derek Bok, the former president of Harvard and one of the forces behind
>the declaration, has urged his colleagues to "consider civic
>responsibility as an explicit and important aim of college education."
>In January, some 1,300 administrators met in Washington under the
>auspices of the Association of American Colleges and Universities to
>take up this topic: "What practices provide students with the knowledge
>and commitments to be socially responsible citizens?" That's not a bad
>question, but the answers to it should not be the content of a college
>or university course.
>
>  No doubt, the practices of responsible citizenship and moral behavior
>should be encouraged in our young adults — but it's not the business of
>the university to do so, except when the morality in question is the
>morality that penalizes cheating, plagiarizing and shoddy teaching, and
>the desired citizenship is defined not by the demands of democracy, but
>by the demands of the academy.
>
>  This is so not because these practices are political, but because they
>are the political tasks that belong properly to other institutions.
>Universities could engage in moral and civic education only by deciding
>in advance which of the competing views of morality and citizenship is
>the right one, and then devoting academic resources and energy to the
>task of realizing it. But that task would deform (by replacing) the true
>task of academic work: the search for truth and the dissemination of it
>through teaching.
>
>The idea that universities should be in the business of forming
>character and fashioning citizens is often supported by the claim that
>academic work should not be hermetically sealed or kept separate from
>the realm of values. But the search for truth is its own value, and
>fidelity to it mandates the accompanying values of responsibility in
>pedagogy and scholarship.
>
>  Performing academic work responsibly and at the highest level is a job
>big enough for any scholar and for any institution. And, as I look
>around, it does not seem to me that we academics do that job so well
>that we can now take it upon ourselves to do everyone else's job too. We
>should look to the practices in our own shop, narrowly conceived, before
>we set out to alter the entire world by forming moral character, or
>fashioning democratic citizens, or combating globalization, or embracing
>globalization, or anything else.
>
>One would like to think that even the exaggerated sense of virtue that
>is so much a part of the academic mentality has its limits. If we aim
>low and stick to the tasks we are paid to perform, we might actually get
>something done.
>
>Stanley Fish will step down next month as dean of the College of Liberal
>Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
>
>Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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