Stanley Fish is probably mainstream academia’s most popular advocate that the classroom is no place for politics.  He seems to be saying to the Left that politics have nothing to do with, say, literary theory.  And he seems to be saying to the Right that conservative politics are just as ridiculous in the classroom as liberal politics.  Based on what I know of his teaching and writing and general opining, Fish is a liberal who believes himself above the pettiness, or possibly below the loftiness, of politics.

Teachers cannot – except serendipitously – fashion moral character or produce citizens of a certain temper.

The conservative (and rhetoric teacher at the University of Chicago) Richard Weaver believed that Ideas Have Consequences, which would seem to indicate that abstract ideas (i.e., much of what’s taught in a university) have some bearing in the civic, moral, and aesthetic realm of everyday experience.  But Fish seems to have removed “higher education” completely from the sphere of regular human experience.

It’s not that far a journey from A) learning how to read Milton (which is something Fish has taught students to do) to B) seeing the implications of Milton’s poetry for human behavior (something Fish says he is incapable of teaching).  It’s an even shorter journey from A) learning how to write an argumentative essay to B) learning why it’s appropriate in a democracy to use words, rather than physical force, to change behavior.  Learning these things above does imply that the teacher of these things believes something (the reading of good literature) has more value than something else (the shooting of a good man).

Does this mean that questions of value and discussion of current issues must be banished from the classroom? Not at all. No question, issue, or topic is off limits to classroom discussion so long as it is the object of academic rather than political or ideological attention. To many this will seem a difficult, if not impossible, distinction.

He seems to suggest that academics are the only objective, neutral parties in all of history, but I’m not sure that’s the case.  It’s one thing for a professor to say, “Let’s treat all sides fairly in this discussion of abortion.”  It’s quite another thing to say, “We are going to discuss the issue of abortion and act like our discussion has no bearing on the reality of any of our views on abortion.”

Finally, though, Fish admits that the professor should proseltyze some values: “The only advocacy that should go on in the classroom is the advocacy of the intellectual virtues.”  These virtues are thoroughness, perserverance, intellectual honest, and being conscientious in the pursuit of truth.  And where do those virtues come from?  The Board of Trustees must have found them in the basement somewhere.