Versions of Academic Freedom: From Professionalism to Revolution

178 Pages·2014·1.04 MB·English

by  Stanley Fish

versions
of
academic
freedom
the rice university
campbell lectures
other books in the series
Museums Matter (2011), by James Cuno
Shakespeare’s Freedom (2010), by Stephen Greenblatt
Thousands of Broadways (2009), by Robert Pinsky
The Writer as Migrant (2008), by Ha Jin
Versions
of
Academic
Freedom
from professionalism to revolution
Stanley Fish
the
university
of chicago
press
Chicago and
London
stanley fish is The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
the Davidson-Kahn The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
Distinguished © 2014 by Stanley Fish
University Professor All rights reserved. Published 2014.
and Professor of Printed in the United States of America
Law at Florida 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 1 2 3 4 5
International isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 06431- 4 (cloth)
University and isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 17025- 1 (e- book)
the Floersheimer doi: 10.7208/chicago/9780226170251.001.0001
Distinguished
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Visiting Professor of
Law at Benjamin N. Fish, Stanley Eugene, author.
Cardozo School of Versions of academic freedom : from
Law. professionalism to revolution / Stanley Fish.
pages cm. — (Rice University Campbell
lectures)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-226-06431-4 (cloth : alk. paper) —
isbn 978-0-226-17025-1 (e-book) 1. Freedom of
speech—United States. 2. Academic freedom—
United States. 3. Intellectual freedom—United
States. 4. United States. Constitution 1st
Amendment. 5. Civil service—United States. I. Title.
kf4772.f5677 2014
371.1′04—dc23
2014013079
♾ This paper meets the requirements of
ansi/niso z39.48– 1992 (Permanence of Paper).
To
william van alstyne,
colleague and friend

contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
1 academic freedom studies
The Five Schools 1
2 the “it’s just a job” school
Professionalism, Pure and Simple 20
3 the “for the common good” school
Academic Freedom, Shared Governance,
and Democracy 37
4 professionalism vs. critique
The Post- Butler Debates 50
5 academic exceptionalism and
public employee law 74
6 virtue before professionalism
The Road to Revolution 104
Coda 129
appendix
Academic Freedom, the First Amendment, and
Holocaust Denial (a talk given by the author at
Rice University, April 2012) 137
Works Cited 151
Index 157

preface
This is a thesis book, which means that it does not
pretend to be a comprehensive treatment of its
subject. The list of the topics it slights is at least
as long as the list of the topics it includes. I at-
tempt to survey the quite large literature about
academic freedom and to distill from it a tax-
onomy of approaches. That taxonomy is at once
philosophical and political, and only occasionally
historical and empirical. I am interested in the
ways people talk about academic freedom and
in the presuppositions (about truth, the purpose
of education, and the social/political function of
the academy) implied by their talk. This interest
leads me in some directions and away from
others. I do not, for example, say much about
tenure, unionization, the rise of contingent fac-
ulty, the decline in the funding of state universi-
ties, the rewards and perils of partnerships with
industry, the impact of technology, the changes
in the world of publishing, the culture wars, ter-
rorism, or globalism. Each of these has a rela-
tionship to academic freedom that deserves, and
has often received, extended attention. But not
here.
Nor do I take into account the shape of aca-
demic freedom in countries other than the
United States. Some of the needed comparative
work has been ably done by Eric Barendt (2010)
in his Academic Freedom and the Law: A Com-
parative Study. Barendt observes that in some
ways academic freedom in the United States “is
a much more complex subject than it is in the
United Kingdom or Germany, where the f reedom
 ix