No doubt you’ve already heard about Kevin Barrett, the adjunct instructor at the University of Wisconsin who is also a 9/11 conspiracy guy – that is, he thinks the attacks were part of an “inside job” meant to provoke a war in the Middle East.  In the NYT Stanley Fish argues that much of the debate surrounding whether Barrett should be allowed to teach or not – he seems to have made it clear that he will teach his conspiracy theories – is misguided in that it’s framed as a question of “academic freedom.”  But as Fish rightly points out, academic freedom is primarily about research activities, not teaching. He suggests that the Provost should have asked whether Barrett could separate himself from his beliefs when teaching because if he couldn’t, then he’s in the business of “indoctrination,” not teaching.

The advantage of this way of thinking about the issue is that it outflanks the sloganeering and posturing both sides indulge in: on the one hand, faculty members who shout “academic freedom” and mean by it an instructor’s right to say or advocate anything at all with impunity; on the other hand, state legislators who shout “not on our dime” and mean by it that they can tell academics what ideas they can and cannot bring into the classroom.

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.

The first thing to note is that this is a bit of a strange argument for Fish, who has made his name (outside literature circles) by pressing the view that we can’t separate ourselves from our basic beliefs and that there is no neutral ground.

The second thing to note is that Fish’s description of academic freedom even in research isn’t quite right.  No university allows professors to conduct research that will harm human subjects; professors have to work through institutional review boards even when doing something as innocuous as interviewing people on their political affiliations.  Psychology professors can’t see if electric shock therapy could change people’s views.

The third thing is that teachers just don’t have the freedom to teach whatever they want – and they shouldn’t.  Universities – and any other kind of school – exist (among other things) as institutions dedicated to the moral and intellectual formation of their students.  The professor is a *part* of that institution and as such has to fit within the parameters set by the institution.  No one assigned to teach a class on Shakespeare should be allowed to have his students read comic books for the semester, neither should should someone teach “flat-earth” geography.  We rightly give professors a wide latitude in designing their courses but only because we think that, in the end, the students benefit. There are limits to that autonomy.

Finally, though, there’s something to Fish’s distinction between “teaching” and “indoctrination” and in the idea that the classroom isn’t supposed to be a recruiting session for one’s pet projects, however noble they might be.  But that doesn’t mean, I think, that teachers need to separate themselves from their views.  I used to think that teachers needed to remove themselves from their own views on controversial matters when teaching them, trying as they can to provide all sides of the controversies as fairly as they can – what we might call the detachment model of teaching.
I still think teachers should show all sides of controversies as fairly as they can, but I think there is actually great value in teachers doing so from their point of view, explaining to students why they think that one side is superior to the other (or others).  It’s a tricky way to teach, mostly because students will have to learn to trust the professor to be fair in their grading of papers and exams and because the professor has to be good at criticizing other points of view fairly.  But if it’s done well, it does something that the detachment model doesn’t – it actually models how it’s possible to have civil, serious arguments over important and very deeply disputed issues.  The primary reason that I think the detachment model is deficient is that it subtly teaches students that what smart people do when faced with controversial subjects is to take an air of detached neutrality, cooly surveying the various options, and declining to embrace any of them.  My experience as a teacher has been that students don’t really like to get engaged in arguments over controversial subjects – the detachment model merely reinforces that tendency.

So, should Barrett be allowed to teach?  Probably not, since it seems pretty clear to me that he’s unwilling to treat views different from his own fairly and is probably more interested in indoctrination than teaching.