Save the World on Your Own Time by Stanley Fish

Save the World on Your Own Time by Stanley Fish

What should be the role of our institutions of higher education? To promote good moral character? To bring an end to racism, sexism, economic oppression, and other social ills? To foster diversity and democracy and produce responsible citizens? In Save the World On Your Own Time, Stanley Fish argues that, however laudable these goals might be, there is but one proper role for the academe in society: to advance bodies of knowledge and to equip students for doing the same. When teachers offer themselves as moralists, political activists, or agents of social change rather than as credentialed experts in a particular subject and the methods used to analyze it, they abdicate their true purpose. And yet professors now routinely bring their political views into the classroom and seek to influence the political views of their students. Those who do this will often invoke academic freedom, but Fish argues that academic freedom, correctly understood, is the freedom to do the academic job, not the freedom to do any job that comes into the professor's mind. He insists that a professor's only obligation is "to present the material in the syllabus and introduce students to state-of-the-art methods of analysis. Not to practice politics, but to study it; not to proselytize for or against religious doctrines, but to describe them; not to affirm or condemn Intelligent Design, but to explain what it is and analyze its appeal." Given that hot-button issues such as Holocaust denial, free speech, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are regularly debated in classrooms across the nation, Save the World On Your Own Time is certain to spark fresh debate-and to incense both liberals and conservatives-about the true purpose of higher education in America.

This text is characteristic of Fish's recent writings on the role of the academy, whereby he skilfully reframes the debate to reveal and question the hidden presuppositions of both sides of the university controversy, which is becoming increasingly complex due to conflicting views of the university's purposeKelly C. MacPhail, Political Studies Review

Stanley Fish is a visiting professor of law at Cardozo University and the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and Law at Florida International University. He has taught at the University of California, Berkeley, Johns Hopkins University, Duke University, and the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he served as dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He has garnered numerous accolades and distinctions, including the title of Chicagoan of the Year for Cultural. He is the author of a number of well-known works, including Winning Arguments and How to Write and Read a Sentence. Fish is a former New York Times weekly columnist. The Chronicle of Higher Education, Harper's Magazine, Esquire, and The Atlantic have all published his essays and articles.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780195369021
ISBN 10	0195369025
Title	Save the World on Your Own Time
Author	Stanley Fish
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Oxford University Press Inc
Year published	2008-08-11
Number of pages	200
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.