Description: Advocates of academic freedom often view it as a variation of the right to free speech and an essential feature of democracy. Stanley Fish argues here for a narrower conception of academic freedom, one that does not grant academics a legal status different from other professionals. Providing a blueprint for the study of academic freedom, Fish breaks down the schools of thought on the subject, which range from the idea that academic freedom is justified by the common good or by academic exceptionalism, to its potential for critique or indeed revolution. Fish himself belongs to what he calls the It s Just a Job school: while academics need the latitude call it freedom if you like necessary to perform their professional activities, they are not free in any special sense to do anything but their jobs. Academic freedom, Fish argues, should be justified only by the specific educational good that academics offer. Defending the university in all its glorious narrowness as a place of disinterested inquiry, Fish offers a bracing corrective to academic orthodoxy."
Brief description: Stanley Fish is the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Law and the Humanities in the College of Law at Florida International University and the author of numerous books.
Review Quotes: "With his customary flair and insight, Stanley Fish discusses essential contemporary issues of academic freedom. Fish's views are consistently trenchant and illuminating. They should be required reading for anyone interested in these questions."--Robert Post, Yale University