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Gone fishing
Stanley Fish wrote an op-ed for the New York Times a couple of weeks ago that both recognizes a fundamental problem with contemporary academe and denies it exists.
Fish opens with the tale of Emily Brooker, a Missouri State University student who was required, as part of a social work course, to write a letter to the state legislature supporting gay adoption. Brooker wrote the letter, but refused to sign it on the grounds that it conflicted with her beliefs. The school responded by convening a committee of faculty and students to determine whether she was fit to pursue social work. Brooker sued with the aid of David French and the Alliance Defense Fund, and Missouri State settled out of court.
Fish uses Brooker's case to both deplore the manner in which Missouri State confused advocacy with education, and to argue--utterly counterintuitively--that there is no problem with how Missouri State comports itself:
...what the professor was requiring of his class was public advocacy, and it doesn't matter whether an individual student would have approved of the advocacy; advocacy is just not what should be going on in a university.
Once advocacy is removed from the equation -- once issues, including gay adoption, are objects of study rather than alternatives to be embraced -- the beliefs, religious or otherwise, of either students or professors, become irrelevant.
A student assigned to study an issue must be equipped with the appropriate analytical skills. Acquiring and applying those skills in no way depend on political or ideological affiliations. If the assignment is to give an account of the dispute about gay adoption rather than to come down on one side or the other, two students with opposing views of the matter might very well produce the very same account. Academic performance and individual beliefs are independent variables. They have nothing to do with each other.
If the distinction between studying and advocating were honored, there would be no need for Provision J of House Bill 213, which deals with ''conflicts between personal beliefs and classroom assignments.'' There could be no such conflicts if classroom assignments asked students to analyze an issue rather than pronounce on it; no one's personal beliefs about anything would be in play.
Not only is Provision J beside the point; the entire bill is beside the point because it addresses a problem that should never arise, and proposes a remedy no different from the disease it claims to cure. Under House Bill 213, institutions of higher education would be required to report each year on their efforts ''to ensure and promote intellectual diversity.''
''Intellectual diversity'' ... mandates the proportional representation, on the faculty and in the curriculum, of conservatives and liberals. Its watchword is ''balance,'' but balance is a political measure, not an educational measure, for it could be achieved only by monitoring the political affiliations of professors and the political content of the materials they assign.
Coming from a critic as savvy as Fish, the doublethink here is disappointing, to say the least.
First, there is the serious error of fact: "Intellectual diversity" as envisioned by the bill Fish cites and as discussed by ACTA in the report that underwrites the bill, has absolutely nothing to do with "mandat[ing] the proportional representation, on the faculty and in the curriculum, of conservatives and liberals." Quotas are very far from the spirit of either the bill or ACTA's work. The aim is ending viewpoint discrimination--and "intellectual diversity" expresses that aim.
Second, there is Fish's clumsy shell game. Does Fish not see the contradiction in his argument? That's doubtful. Does he expect his readers won't see it? If so, that's shameful.
In any case, readers did notice it, and they did write to the Times about it. Here's what ACTA president Anne Neal had to say:
Far from refuting the need for legislative oversight of higher education, Stanley Fish's "Advocacy and Teaching" (March 24) underscores it.
Fish claims a bill requiring public universities to report on steps taken to ensure intellectual diversity, is "beside the point because it addresses a problem that should never arise." As Fish admits, however, the problem of "advocacy" in the classroom does arise -- as it did in the case of Emily Brooker.
Advocacy passes for teaching in far too many classrooms, as a new poll cited by legislators made clear: Fifty-one percent of undergraduates at Missouri's two largest public universities reported pressure to agree with professors' views to get good grades; nearly 60 percent said professors use classrooms to present personal political views.
Of course, the academy could address the problem voluntarily. But, as Fish illustrates, it refuses. In the face of continuing denial, no wonder legislators are asking for accountability before writing another blank check.
Unfortunately, the Times did not print Neal's letter.
But her take meshes with those of others who are in a position to assess what Fish is saying. Here's what David French has to say about Fish's article: "If the distinction between studying and advocating were honored of course there would be no need for the bill, but it's not honored. In fact, that distinction is too often regarded as a small-minded nuisance in the 'speak truth to power' modern academy. The bill exists because the academy has betrayed its obligations, not as a superfluous add-on to remind professors of the things they are already doing."
Posted by acta online at April 6, 2007 10:04 AM
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