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Just academicize it
The current edition of Policy Review has an article based on Stanley Fish's new book, Save the World on Your Own Time. Fish argues -- and ACTA would most certainly agree -- that too often, university classrooms have become platforms for advocacy rather than places where students are exposed to a wide body of knowledge and equipped with the analytical skills necessary to evaluate ideas and concepts.
That isn't to say that Fish advocates shutting debates about current social and political controversies out of the classroom. Rather, he recommends that professors "academicize" such topics -- "to detach [them] from the context of [their] real world urgency, where there is a vote to be taken or an agenda to be embraced, and insert [them] into a context of academic urgency, where there is an account to be offered or an analysis to be performed." This can effectively de-politicize an issue by examining the historical and philosophical ideas that underlie current public debates -- and the classroom can be a more intellectually vibrant place because of it. University trustees would be wise to encourage their institutions to heed this advice from Fish.
Posted by Sandra E. Czelusniak on August 14, 2008 at August 14, 2008 12:14 PM
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