Purely Academic
Save the World on Your own Time
by Stanley Fish
Oxford University Press, 2008
(208 pages, $19.95, hardcover)
reviewed by Perry L. Glanzer
According to Stanley Fish’s recent book, Save the World on Your Own Time, “No university, and therefore no university official, should ever take a stand on any social, political or moral issue.” Of course, Fish does not mean that the university’s professors should not claim to know what a good teacher is or should do. That would put universities out of business. Instead, he argues that universities and the professors employed by them should not offer definitive answers to moral questions or shape students’ characters in accord with some larger vision of the good.
The moral authority for Fish’s normative claim stems from what he pronounces should be the only two purposes of the academic profession and the university: to “(1) introduce students to bodies of knowledge and traditions of inquiry they didn’t know much about before; and (2) equip those same students with the analytical skills that will enable them to move confidently within those traditions and to engage in independent research should they choose to do so.”
Those who join universities, Fish believes, should take a monastic sort of pledge to abide by these missions and form their lives accordingly. He writes that “it is the professional, and in some sense moral, obligation of faculty members to check their moral commitments at the door.”
He applies the same thinking to the moral education of students, arguing that the university should not attempt to form a student’s character as a whole or teach him how to be a better citizen. Instead, he says, it should only promote a specific moral vision, one rooted in the students’ vocational identity. “No doubt, the practices of responsible citizenship and moral behavior should be encouraged in our young adults,” Fish admits, “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.”
Limited Moral Vision
Thus, Fish’s vision of moral formation for the university community is limited to those principles and virtues necessary for realizing its educational mission, such as “the integrity of scholarship, the evil of plagiarism, [and] the value of liberal education.” For professors, this means that “job performance should be assessed on the basis of academic virtue, not virtue in general. Teachers should show up for their classes, prepare lesson plans, teach what has been advertised, be current in the literature in the field, promptly correct assignments and papers, hold regular office hours, and give academic (not political or moral) advice.” For students, it means penalizing cheating and plagiarism, and promoting such intellectual virtues as “thoroughness, perseverance, [and] intellectual honesty.”
Fish sets forth two reasons for promoting this limited moral vision within universities. First, he thinks these purposes are the only ones universities can actually achieve. He claims that “teachers cannot, except for a serendipity that by definition cannot be counted on, fashion moral character, or inculcate respect for others, or produce citizens of a certain temper.” Moreover, he argues, you cannot find such tasks in their contracts. Second, any other approach would lead to the corruption of the university, because it would mean that the university’s “resources have been appropriated for a nonacademic purpose.”
Fish recognizes that he’s swimming against the current by making this argument, but he claims to have some old allies. He even claims to have John Henry Newman on his side. I find this doubtful, however, since Newman saw the Church as indispensable to the work of the university. Fish appears to think that the Church would likely be a corrupting influence.
Although he allows in one parenthetical remark that sectarian institutions should be allowed to indoctrinate, his whole argument implies that a university’s attachment to any religious, political, or ideological identity will corrupt it. He claims that, in order to achieve their purposes, universities must even throw off the shackles of various versions of the liberal democratic story that compete to control them, since “democratic values and academic values are not the same and . . . the confusion of the two can easily damage the quality of education.”
Perry Glanzer is an Assistant Professor in the School of Education at Baylor University and the author of The Quest for Russia?s Soul (Baylor University Press). He attends First Baptist Church in Woodway, Texas.
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
24.1—January/February 2011
Marriage Thrives in Reality, Not in Our Dreams by Nathan Schlueter
20.7—September 2007
Paul Didn’t Build Bridges to Popular Culture by Russell D. Moore
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
