At 11:45 AM -0400 7/24/06, Miguel Roig wrote:
There was an interesting Op Ed piece in the NY Times by Stanley Fish that I
thought would be of interest to the list:
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/opinion/23fish.html.
The following quote is taken from the end of the essay:
"All you have to do is remember that academic freedom is just that: the
freedom to do an academic job without external interference. It is not the
freedom to do other jobs, jobs you are neither trained for nor paid to
perform. While there should be no restrictions on what can be taught - no
list of interdicted ideas or topics - there should be an absolute
restriction on appropriating the scene of teaching for partisan political
ideals. Teachers who use the classroom to indoctrinate make the enterprise
of higher education vulnerable to its critics and shortchange students in
the guise of showing them the true way."
So far, sounds pretty reasonable.
However, the author (Stanley Fish) at times seems to be saying that
you can _study_ any topic in your field of competence, but your
rights to _talk_ about it are restricted.
This is equivalent to saying that the first amendment says that US
citizens have the right to think (believe) about anything they want,
but not necessarily to talk about it.
The line between presenting and advocating can be fuzzy -- there are
those who would say that one cannot present the case for Marxism
(terrorism, fill in your own topic) without advocating it.
This seems to be David Horowitz's position.
--
The best argument against intelligent design is that people believe in it.
* PAUL K. BRANDON [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
* Psychology Department 507-389-6217 *
* 23 Armstrong Hall Minnesota State University, Mankato *
* http://krypton.mnsu.edu/%7Epkbrando/ *
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