Free Republic

The more militant members of the N.R.A. and most of its leaders may be un-American. By “militant” I don’t mean those who wish to protect recreational shooting and hunting; nor do I mean those who, like Justice Antonin Scalia, believe that there is a constitutional right to defend one’s home and family with firearms. These are respectable positions (although I am deeply unpersuaded by the second). I mean those who read the Second Amendment as proclaiming the right of citizens to resist the tyranny of their own government, that is, of the government that issued and ratified the Constitution in...

Liberal pundits and the politicians whose agendas they favor continue to misunderstand the Tea Party movement and, what is worse, fail to realize how much the disdainful tone of their criticism fuels it. This may be changing now as the ominous signs proliferate — the primary victories of Christine O’Donnell, Joe Miller, Rand Paul and Sharron Angle, the likely election victory of Mark Rubio and, in recent days, the startling news that Carl Paladino and Joe DioGuardi may be closing in on supposedly shoo-ins Andrew Cuomo and Kirsten Gillibrand (I say “may be” because there are conflicting polls). And of...

“When I walked into the Strand Bookstore in Manhattan last week, I headed straight for the bright young thing who wore an ‘Ask Me’ button, and asked her to point me to the section of the store where I might find Sarah Palin’s memoir, ‘Going Rogue: An American Life.’ She looked at me as if I had requested a copy of ‘Mein Kampf’ signed in blood by the author, and directed me to the nearest Barnes and Noble, where, presumably, readers of dubious taste and sensibility could find what they wanted.” The audacious Stanley Fish of the New York Times...

Years ago I had a series of debates with the literary scholar Stanley Fish. Our topic was political correctness. I portrayed Fish as the grand deconstructor of Western civilization, and he fired back in There’s No Such Thing As Free Speech, several chapters of which are an answer to my arguments. As I got to know Fish, however, I recognized that although he defended some of the practices being promoted in the name of multiculturalism and diversity, he was not himself a politically correct thinker. We became friends, and in 1992 he and his wife attended my wedding. Fish has...

Maybe one of the reasons that we have never-ending battles over academic freedom is that many academics seem to define it differently. “Academic freedom means that if I think that there may be an intellectual payoff to be had by turning an academic lens on material others consider trivial — golf tees, gourmet coffee, lingerie ads, convenience stores, street names, whatever — I should get a chance to try,” veteran professor Stanley Fish recently wrote in The New York Times. “If I manage to demonstrate to my peers and students that studying this material yields insights into matters of general...

KEVIN BARRETT, a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, has now taken his place alongside Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado as a college teacher whose views on 9/11 have led politicians and ordinary citizens to demand that he be fired. Mr. Barrett, who has a one-semester contract to teach a course titled “Islam: Religion and Culture,” acknowledged on a radio talk show that he has shared with students his strong conviction that the destruction of the World Trade Center was an inside job perpetrated by the American government. The predictable uproar ensued, and the equally predictable...

One of America’s foremost postmodern academics, Dr. Stanley Fish, dean emeritus at the University of Illinois and professor at Duke, has come up with an ingenious idea for teaching college students to write better. Here’s how he describes it in the New York Times: “On the first day of my freshman writing class I give the students this assignment: You will be divided into groups, and by the end of the semester each group will be expected to have created its own language, complete with a syntax, a lexicon, a text, rules for translating the text and strategies for teaching...

Late in his dissent to the majority opinion upholding the affirmative action policy at the University of Michigan's law school, Justice Clarence Thomas rehearses and rejects the familiar conservative argument that "in the absence of racial discrimination in admissions there would be a true meritocracy." There are, he points out, numerous exceptions to the merit standard, including the exception given to children of alumni who are admitted, as George W. Bush was by Yale, as "legacies." Justice Thomas calls this exception "unseemly," and for a moment it seems that he will join those on the liberal side who point to...

These are uncertain times for literary scholars. The era of big theory is over. The grand paradigms that swept through humanities departments in the 20th century — psychoanalysis, structuralism, Marxism, deconstruction, post-colonialism — have lost favor or been abandoned. Money is tight. And the leftist politics with which literary theorists have traditionally been associated have taken a beating. In the latest sign of mounting crisis, on April 11 the editors of Critical Inquiry, academe's most prestigious theory journal, convened the scholarly equivalent of an Afghan-style loya jirga. They invited more than two dozen of America's professorial elite, including Henry Louis...

"I wish to deny the effectiveness of intellectual work. And especially, I always wish to counsel people against the decision to go into the academy because they hope to be effective beyond it." That's what Stanley Fish had to say at what was billed as historic "intellectual town meeting" at the University of Chicago on April 11. Stanley Fish, as you may know, is one of leftist academia's all-stars. If he was an athlete, they'd have retired his number and inducted him to the Hall of Fame already. And so when he says "intellectual work" is ineffective, it means something....

These are uncertain times for literary scholars. The era of big theory is over. The grand paradigms that swept through humanities departments in the 20th century — psychoanalysis, structuralism, Marxism, deconstruction, post-colonialism — have lost favor or been abandoned. Money is tight. And the leftist politics with which literary theorists have traditionally been associated have taken a beating. In the latest sign of mounting crisis, on April 11 the editors of Critical Inquiry, academe's most prestigious theory journal, convened the scholarly equivalent of an Afghan-style loya jirga. They invited more than two dozen of America's professorial elite, including Henry Louis...

College Students Can’t Write? What a “scoop.” By Stanley K. Ridgley The Chronicle of Higher Education recently discovered something that parents have known for at least the past 15 years — America's universities don't teach college kids how to write . . . at least, not how to write very well. In fact, hundreds of thousands of recent college graduates today cannot express themselves with the written word. Why? Because universities have shortchanged them, offering strange literary theories, Marxism, feminism, deconstruction, and other oddities in the guise of writing courses. They've offered everything, really, but the basics of clear writing....

Front Page The Chronicle Review Jobs Colloquy Colloquy Live Site Sampler This Week's Issue Back Issues About The Chronicle How to Contact Us How to Register How to Subscribe Subscriber Services Change Your User Name Change Your Password Forgot Your Password? How to Advertise Press Inquiries Corrections Privacy Policy The Mobile Chronicle Help Friday, May 24, 2002 Stop the Presses By STANLEY FISH An inside look at the politics of academic careers Previous articles "Every journalist ... knows that what he does is morally indefensible." -- Janet Malcolm Whenever a reporter calls to speak with me, I try to...