Stanley Fish references Ann Althouse’s blog in an NYT article about Kevin Barrett, that “911 was an inside job” prof at UW, prompting an interesting response / discussion at Alhouse’s blog. Fish claims that the teaching (”teaching”) of any subject should be OK as long as one doesn’t cross the line into indoctrination:
Rather, the question should be: “Do you separate yourself from your partisan identity when you are in the employ of the citizens of Wisconsin and teach subject matter — whatever it is — rather than urge political action?” If the answer is yes, allowing Mr. Barrett to remain in the classroom is warranted. If the answer is no, (or if a yes answer is followed by classroom behavior that contradicts it) he should be shown the door. Not because he would be teaching the “wrong” things, but because he would have abandoned teaching for indoctrination.
I note that this approach to professionalism hasn’t worked out so well for the MSM, who say “Well, we can’t deny we’re completely insane partisan whackjobs, but hey, from 9 to 5 we’re totally neutral - we promise!”
Althouse very politely calls BS:
[A] test for the university will come when we see how it treats others in similar positions. What if we found someone hired to teach here was a white supremacist, planning to devote a week of his course to his theory? Would he be treated with as much respect as Barrett? What if we found someone hired to teach evolution was a young earth creationist planning to devote a week of his course to his theory? These people now must be treated the same. Pretty horrible. I hate to even type that out. But this underscores why the hiring phase matters so much.
Because we don’t know from experience whether postmodern lefty nihilist literary theorists and their ilk are prone to having double standards with regard to their anti-western agenda, we’ll probably just have to hope for the best and see which way they go on this.