More Fish Tales

There he goes again. “He,” of course, is Stanley Fish, who has built his academic career — first as a scholar, then as a high-priced dean — on the argument that he doesn’t really believe his own arguments. I don’t blame him; I don’t believe them, either. (For my earlier comments on this school of Fish, see here, here, and here.)

In his most recent article, “The War on Higher Education,” Fish discusses some recent efforts by House Republicans to contain college costs and to crack the liberal monopoly on many campuses by promoting more intellectual and political diversity. Fish claims these efforts amount to an assault on the “autonomy and professional integrity” of “the academic community.” And, although it’s hard to hold on to a Fish argument, one suspects that he disapproves of these efforts since he calls them “slipshod, superficial, meretricious, and worthless,” as well as “dishonest” and “a mixture of nonsense and paranoia.”

That last characterization is interesting, inasmuch as it implies that Fish believes in something like a correspondence theory of truth, i.e., that there is some objective reality against which to measure interpretations. Consistent with this (current) stance, Fish, perhaps suprisingly to some, has no use for “diversity,” or at least intellectual diversity.

Intellectual diversity is not a respectable intellectual goal. The only respectable intellectual goal is the pursuit of truth, and if in the course of that pursuit many different approaches arise, as they will in some fields, that’s fine; but it would also be fine if in a particular field there were (at least temporarily) a convergence of views and not very much diversity at all.

Fish has played this tune before, such as here, where he wrote that the prattle over “diversity” in the University of Michigan cases was just

so much shadowboxing — stalking-horses for the real arguments — because diversity is not a condition anyone actually desires.

What people desire is the alteration of a situation that displeases them; they regard it as an injustice that some group or population has been excluded from a benefit. They are not for diversity with a capital D — no one is. They are for the limited expansion of the franchise in the direction of their preferences.

In short, diversity — and I would say the same for its close relatives: openness, balance and inclusiveness — is a political rather than a substantive rallying cry. You call for diversity when your enemies dominate the playing field. You preach balance when the numbers are against you; you tout openness when you and your friends have been shut out.

Once the resonant phrases have had the desired effect and remade the world so it suits you just fine, the universalist vocabulary of diversity, balance and openness is discarded, only to be picked up by those who would deploy it in the service of an agenda you would never sign on to. Live by abstraction, die by abstraction.

In the current article Fish complains that those meanie Republicans in Congress are trying to displace liberals in academica not because of a belief in openness or diversity but simply to replace them with conservatives. He complains, for example, that they have been unduly influenced by the wishes of the Traditional Values Coalition. “To be sure,” he states,

the coalition is entitled to its beliefs. What it is not entitled to is the tailoring of publicly financed scientific research to conform with those beliefs.

But wait a minute. Fish has spent his career arguing that there are no “rights” here. Everything is political. If the Traditional Values Coalition, or any other organization, can persuade Congress to do its bidding, who’s to say they are not “entitled” to throw Fish and friends back in the Big Muddy and install whomever they want in positions of authority, to spend taxpayer money however taxpayers (as determined by elected representatives in Congress) want? Certainly Fish has no legs to stand on to make an objection.

So now Fish wants to argue that conservatives are infringing upon academic freedom, on the “autonomy and professional integrity” of the academic community? Could that be the same Fish who argues that academic freedom is bunk? As I argued here,

Academic freedom is a bad idea, a dubious principle that:

* Confuses eccentricity with genius and elevates pettiness, boorishness, and irresponsibility to the status of virtue.

* Evacuates morality by making all assertions equivalent and, because equivalent, inconsequential.

* Empties history of its meaning, so that actions proceeding from entirely different motives and agendas become indistinguishable as instances of individual preference and free choice.

* Promotes a regime of relativism by refusing to make judgments, on the reasoning that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Fish may be disingenuous, but at least he’s honest about it. How can he reject the principle of academic freedom while opposing some policies because they will interfere with it? The answer is that he remains true to one principle: whatever is good for Fish.

I am an academic professional and, like any member of any profession, I want the norms governing my labors to be devised by me and people like me, not by outsiders. I want, that is, to be free of interference, and if the mantra of academic freedom will help to keep my would-be wardens at bay, I’m all for it, not as a morality but as a guild practice; and I am for it even as I set myself the task of debunking the argument it offers to the public.

In my opinion, one of the most telling critiques of academia today is that someone making an argument like this can be taken seriously and rewarded with prestige and high position. Since Fish has announced in advance that he doesn’t necessarily believe what he says, it makes one feel like a sucker to take the time to argue with him.

Indeed, his argument is so preposterous that responding to it isn’t even fun — rather like shooting [f]ish in a barrel.