In this book Stanley Fish takes on Professors who view it as their mission to indoctrinate their students with ideologies and partisan political views they personally value. Fish says that professors that do this in the classroom are using academic freedom as a licence to preach to their students. Academic freedom's purpose is to keep partisan politics out of the classroom. Universities were terrified (and rightly so) that governments would impose the party's political view into the classroom and punish professors who refused to tote the party line. Unfortunately, some professors are using academic freedom for the exact opposite purpose namely, advocating for a partisan view. "...one violates academic freedom by deciding to set aside academic purposes for others thought to be more noble or urgent." (page 81)

"Leave the geopolitical pronoucements to the politicians whose job it is to make them and follow them up with actions. Remember always what a university is for-- the transmission of knowledge and the conferring of analytical skills--resist the temptation to inflate the importance of what goes on in its precincts. And don't think that everything that comes your way is a matter of free speech and academic freedom. These grand abstractions are invoked by academics at the slightest pretext." (page 79)

Fish is not saying that professors aren't allowed to have strong political or ideological views. Craming those views down the throats of your students though is just wrong.

"Actually I am urging professors to remain silent on important political issues only when they are engaged in teaching. After hours, on their own time, when they write letters to the editor or speak at campus rallies, they can be as vocal as they like about anything and everything." (page 29)

"...and to those professors who turn freedom into license by using the classrom as a partisan pulpit, or by teaching materials unrelated to the course description, or by coming to class unprepared or not at all, you can say, 'look, it's freedom to do the job, not freedom to change it or shirk it'...In short, and for the last itme, just do your job. The world of grand and ambitious ends will take care of itself, and if it doesn't, you can always save it on your own time." (pages 82, 178)

I don't agree with everything that is said in this book, Fish is a lefty (and I'm generally suspicious of anyone who is proud to have voted for John Kerry. lol, there that was my partisan political punch.) Having said that I think this book should be mandatory reading for all professors at Western Law for reasons I'm sure many of my fellow students will understand.