Go, Fish

"One would like to think that even the exaggerated sense of virtue that is so much a part of the academic mentality has its limits," writes Stanley Fish, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, in a New York Times op ed. "If we aim low and stick to the tasks we are paid to perform, we might actually get something done":

After nearly five decades in academia, and five and a half years as a dean at a public university, I exit with a three-part piece of wisdom for those who work in higher education: do your job; don't try to do someone else's job, as you are unlikely to be qualified; and don't let anyone else do your job. In other words, don't confuse your academic obligations with the obligation to save the world; that's not your job as an academic; and don't surrender your academic obligations to the agenda of any non-academic constituency — parents, legislators, trustees or donors. In short, don't cross the boundary between academic work and partisan advocacy, whether the advocacy is yours or someone else's.

Marx famously said that our job is not to interpret the world, but to change it. In the academy, however, it is exactly the reverse: our job is not to change the world, but to interpret it. While academic labors might in some instances play a role in real-world politics — if, say, the Supreme Court cites your book on the way to a decision — it should not be the design or aim of academics to play that role.

[via Donald L. Luskin's The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid]

But play that role they will, until this generation of perpetual adolescents -- seduced in their formative years by the false gods of Marxism -- blogged here -- retires and opens the way for fresh thinking. These are the baby-boomers, largest cohort in our nation's history. Like the aging boomers portrayed in Oliver Stone's "The Big Chill," Leftist academics seem to suffer from a case of arrested development, still bewildered that their youthful idealism didn't change the world for the better, after all.

Comments

[Rob A.]

Is it crazy that we're waiting for them to "die off" literally and figuratively?

Rachel Lucas had a similar rant yesterday about how everything is seen through the Vietnam prism.

"Talking 'bout my generation"

We know! We got it! Come join us in the 21st Century.

[arthur jameson]

Dr. Stanley Fish is an academic of whom we can be proud. He is not filled with hubris and hot air like so many in his profession