Stanley Fish at NYT:
It’s often been said that once a woman or an African-American wins the presidency, the obstacles attached to gender and race will just fade away. They already have. I’m not saying that no one will vote against Obama because he’s black; but everyone gets voted against for something, and now that we have gotten quite used to Obama, voting against him because he’s black will be just another ordinary exercise of prejudice, not a special or particularly notable one.
As if the ordinary exercise of racism or sexism has ever been “special or particularly notable”. And getting voted against for one reason is the same as for any other reason. So if someone votes for John McCain because he has white hair and against Barack Obama because he’s black, it’s all the same.
Oh save us.
But then, that’s not Fish’s purpose. Here’s a product description of his latest book, Save the World on Your Own Time:
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.
I have to question whether Professor Fish is qualified to “advance bodies of knowledge” if he cannot see the difference between voting against a candidate for one kind of reason, for instance, that they have white hair, or for another, that they are black or female. One would think it obvious that the two are not analogous and won’t be until the United States adopts a system of economic, social and cultural discrimination against people who have white hair and until it has lasted for several hundred years. And if Stanley Fish thinks that he doesn’t bring his politics into his classroom, he is seriously deluded. That may be the case.
More from the NYT article, as Fish gets excited about Hillary Clinton’s appearance with Barack Obama in Unity, N.H:
She said that this time it’s different, but it wasn’t. As she gave the opening speech you felt that at any moment she might respond to the crowd and re-declare her candidacy. The contrast between his lanky, Jimmy Stewart-like reserve and her unabashed blond ambition was as arresting as ever. The words were healing, but the atmosphere was electric. It was thrilling, and I found myself asking, When’s the next primary?
I wish that Fish wouldn’t say “you felt”. I didn’t. “We” didn’t. He did.
And “blond ambition”? There you have it. It’s about the hair.
mirabile dictu 