Sunday, March 01, 2009

Nerd News + Book Review: Stanley Fish's "Save the World on Your Own Time"

Blurb/summary from the book review:
Universities need to remember what they are there for: to provide students with the intellectual tools to understand the world, not to provide a platform for the partial interests of academics.
Another review of the same book is here. I haven't read the Fish book, but I'll put it on my (ever-increasing) list of things to read!

Related news: this tale out of the University of Ottawa, in which a physics professor refused to teach physics during physics class time so he could rant about his political hobbyhorses instead. He was subsequently fired by the school. No, I don't think this is a matter of "academic freedom." The man wasn't doing his contractual job. I imagine that the university hired him to teach and research -- could it be? -- physics, eh?

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