Comment moderation.

Friends, I've had to turn on comment moderation. This will cause some delay in getting your comments to show up, as I will have to approve them. Unfortunately, this was made necessary because of some very abusive comment behavior today.

UPDATE: Well, I tried to turn off comment moderation this morning (Tuesday), and the abusive commenter managed to get 7 comments up within 20 minutes. I've deleted them all and turned moderation back on. How utterly pathetic the way some people think they are entitled to ruin a community. Amazingly, this blog stalker is someone I know, a former student, who does not perceive how embarrassing her behavior is, I think because she experiences her very moralistic opinions with great certitude. What a shame!

Dreamspace.

Deathspace.

(More here.)

"A shameful question."

Seven bloggers -- including me -- have short essays in The Chronicle of Higher Education about Juan Cole and the risks of being a blogging professor. Cole has a response that begins:

The question is whether Web-log commentary helps or damages an academic's career. It is a shameful question. Intellectuals should not be worrying about "careers," the tenured among us least of all.

"What have you got there? Babies?"

"Oh, all right. I won't bug you then. But I wish you would go live somewhere else."

= what I just said, verbatim, to a rabbit, that I tried to scare away and then saw was crouching over some freakish looking squiggly things.

"Ann Althouse is always worth reading, but she has absolutely been on fire...."

Great beginning for a blog post! It's David French over at Phi Beta Cons, weighing in on the Kevin Barrett controversy.

Two lawprofs, vlogging.

You might call this The Ann & Tonya Vlog. It's me and Tonya Brito, starting off talking about that "eye for an eye" op-ed discussed in the previous post. It's a little over 4 minutes. Don't miss the lawprof catfight.



(Here's the audiobook I talked about.)

An eye for an eye is a subjective game.

Suggests Daniel Gilbert, the Harvard psychologist, in an op-ed in today's NYT. Here's a study he describes:

The researcher began the game by exerting a fixed amount of pressure on the first volunteer’s finger. The first volunteer was then asked to exert precisely the same amount of pressure on the second volunteer’s finger. The second volunteer was then asked to exert the same amount of pressure on the first volunteer’s finger. And so on. The two volunteers took turns applying equal amounts of pressure to each other’s fingers while the researchers measured the actual amount of pressure they applied.

The results were striking. Although volunteers tried to respond to each other’s touches with equal force, they typically responded with about 40 percent more force than they had just experienced. Each time a volunteer was touched, he touched back harder, which led the other volunteer to touch back even harder. What began as a game of soft touches quickly became a game of moderate pokes and then hard prods, even though both volunteers were doing their level best to respond in kind.

So they were upping the pressure 40%? How disturbing is that? Maybe the "eye for an eye" rule already incorporated the realistic prediction that people carrying out retribution would go over the mark. And maybe they should. There are lots of people who would be only too happy to punch you in the face if they had the assurance that all you'd ever do would be to give them one equal punch. But what discord the first puncher causes! How is one equal punch back fair? There's a guy at the next table in the café where I'm writing this. If I waltzed over and slapped him in the face, I'd be shattering the whole social order. Slapping me back is hardly sufficient. The lesson is: Don't start it, because even fair-minded people will pay you back with some extra punishment that you richly deserve for breaching the peace.

Well, that's what crossed my mind. Gilbert's conclusion is much mellower:

Research teaches us that our reasons and our pains are more palpable, more obvious and real, than are the reasons and pains of others. This leads to the escalation of mutual harm, to the illusion that others are solely responsible for it and to the belief that our actions are justifiable responses to theirs.

None of this is to deny the roles that hatred, intolerance, avarice and deceit play in human conflict. It is simply to say that basic principles of human psychology are important ingredients in this miserable stew. Until we learn to stop trusting everything our brains tell us about others — and to start trusting others themselves — there will continue to be tears and recriminations in the wayback.

Hey, why should I trust the bastard who hits me out of the blue?

I know Jesus said "Turn the other cheek." I remember right after 9/11, a friend say to me -- with great enthusiasm -- that a brilliant response would be to do nothing at all, to turn the other cheek. The Muslim world would be awed into profound admiration of us and everything would just topple into place.

What if the judge reads the lawprof's blog?

And the lawprof has analyzed the issue in the judge's case? Howard Bashman asks:

What is the judge to do? Should he stop reading the blog post immediately? Or if he reads the post, is he obligated to alert the parties to its existence and his knowledge of it?

In my view, if the blog post is publicly available to anyone with Internet access, and if the blogger has not taken any steps other than publishing the post to draw it to the attention of the judges before whom a case is pending, then those judges are free to consider and rely on that information if they find it to be helpful. Such a blog post cannot be viewed as an impermissible ex parte communication any more than a New York Times editorial endorsing a particular outcome in a pending U.S. Supreme Court case could be viewed as such....

[A]judge's consultation of those blog posts is, in my view, just another form of permissible legal research.

Is there any trace of a problem here? There's the suggestion that blogging is a too-easy way around writing an amicus brief. (But so is doing an op-ed.) And there's the suggestion that blog posts are written hastily and without much editing. But judges and lawyers are thoroughly used to reading things and deciding what they are worth. (And plenty of law review articles and court briefs and cases are badly done.)

The main thing I can think of is that blog reading can be seductive, eroding your patience for belabored writing, and judges and their clerks might read blogs out of proportion to their actual worth. A relatively small proportion of lawprofs are writing blogs, and the ones who are doing it aren't necessarily the best scholars. We're just the people who love to write in this form.

UPDATE: Howard Bashman responds to this post by recounting an event where judges were fretting about this (non)problem. Judges!

Kos and Israel.

The Weekly Standard describes the political problem Israel's war presents for Daily Kos:

Combined, the half dozen front-pagers have written exactly one post on the subject. And that post, authored by Moulitsas, simply declared that he wouldn't write anything further on the subject. So while the most important story of the year develops, the nation's leading progressive blog has chosen to focus on the Indiana second district House race between Chris Chocola and Joe Donnelly. Nothing wrong with that; it's their prerogative to blog about whatever they like.

But inside the Kos diaries, it's been a different story. The conversation in the diaries has been overwhelmingly anti-Israel--and potentially disastrous for the Democratic party.

This is a very crisply outlined manifestation of a broader problem faced by Kos. The readership is gained with sharp opinions. It wants to transform that readership into political power. But the style and extremity of opinion doesn't suit the people who need to be won over. There's some ugly stuff over there, and perhaps a lot of it can be ignored, especially if it's just in the comments, like calling Israel "a spreading plague" that ought to be "dismantle[d]" -- which The Weekly Standard quotes.

IN THE COMMENTS: There's a lot of discussion about how much comments are seen or should be seen as what the blog is about. I write:

About quoting commenters, remember I had the experience yesterday of seeing my name printed in the New York Times right next to a quote that was written by one of my commenters (who wasn't named). Nothing I wrote was quoted, but there was my name. Fortunately, it wasn't a despicable quote, but it's a little scary to think how that would be read by most people, especially if they don't think about the relationship between the blogger and the commenters (which is that I'm providing a forum and policing only some undefined outer limit). And I initially misread it as quoting me, throughout the whole time I was writing a long post dissecting the article (not concentrating on that part of it). What does the casual reader think? Probably that it's what I said.

Not the usual political discussion.

Elisa Camahort assures BlogHer conventioneers that the political blogging session -- which includes me -- is not going to be about the usual "left vs. right, liberal vs. conservative, Democrat vs. Republican... [or] who uses online communication tools better, or about when political communications cross the line into propaganda, and who are the worst offenders." So what will it be? One thing is highly focused blogging. Lisa Williams and Courtney Hollands blog about one place -- Watertown and Plymouth, respectively. Kety Esquivel creates a place for one group -- progressive Christians. That sounds really coherent, so why am I and Lindsay Beyerstein on the panel too? We shall see. I see they've got me labeled "conservative" over there and saying that I don't consider myself a "knee-jerk partisan." Well, I don't consider myself a conservative or a partisan, knee-jerk or otherwise. But Lindsay's the liberal, so I guess I must be the conservative. But this is not the usual political discussion. So they say.

UPDATE: I emailed Elisa and she's corrected changed "conservative" to "moderate." She also appears in the comments, as does our regular commenter Simon, who says:

It's rather like the radio show you did recently, where they had you as the "conservative" voice, and the nutjob from the local press as the leftie voice.

I can't help wonder if there is some kind of trade-off here: if they portray someone who is basically a moderate centrist as a "conservative", then maybe they feel they can have someone even further to the left to "oppose" you?

On the other hand, if people associate in their minds someone with Ann's qualities with the GOP, I can envisage that having a net positive effect on their view of the GOP.

That's a fascinating pair of theories. They aren't inconsistent really, but you can see how Democrats are hurt. Far lefties are called in to represent them, and they are off-putting to ordinary voters. Strong conservatives aren't properly represented either, but I stand in for them, presenting a more liberal-friendly front.

Where I was. What I was reading.

Yes, I spent some time with the NYT Book Review this afternoon.



The Book Review and the acrostic.

IN THE COMMENTS: JLR asked if I read the Henry Alford essay about books in the bathroom. Well, yes, I did. And I had it on my lists of things to post about, before I hit the wall and decided to end the day with this highly relaxing photograph. But since JLR brought it up, I'll just make it part of the subject matter of this post for you to comment on. It's a cool little essay about the practice of putting a lot of books in the bathroom. What's that all about? There are different motives:

A few bathroom collections fell into a category I’ll call “Entertain or Educate Self.” The actor Jonathan Walker showed me the 16 books — mostly cookbooks from the 1950’s and 60’s — he and his wife keep loosely stacked on a shelf in their bathroom. Given that the books were about food, I brought up a theory held by some psychologists that people read in the bathroom because it’s a symbolic way to replace what’s lost through the act of voiding. A book about food, I speculated, might be an especially vivid replacement. But Walker wasn’t buying. He showed me a semi-psychedelic picture of a dessert called “Red Raspberry Fluff” and said, “it’s like listening to music while you’re vacuuming.”

That's just a taste. Read the whole thing. And don't drop your computer in the toilet.

"Nobody ever went broke overestimating the self-absorption of the Democratic Party."

Writes Tobin Harshaw in the NYT Book Review. I'd prefer to stock up on all those Beatles and Bob Dylan books mentioned in the previous post, but there are also all these new books giving advice to Democrats about what they need to do to stop losing all the time. The reviews today are for David Sirota's "Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government — and How We Take It Back" and George Lakoff's "Whose Freedom? The Battle Over America’s Most Important Idea."

Sirota's a blogger -- here's his blog -- and Harshaw speculates about the general problem of a blogger writing a book:

Perhaps it’s unavoidable when a blogger tries to write at length, but the verbal mannerisms that may seem like an invigorating shot of espresso on a brief daily basis become a bathtub of stale Nescafé when stretched out to more than 300 pages. The clichéd revolutionary language (political TV programs offer “a flood of Orwellian messages from the Establishment that deny the existence of our very own beliefs”), the wafer-thin allusions to popular culture (a single paragraph includes references to Rocky Balboa’s trainer, Luke Skywalker’s light saber and Superman’s Fortress of Solitude) and the childish taunts (Tom DeLay is “slime”; Mickey Kantor, who served as Bill Clinton’s trade representative, is a “hack”) quickly become oppressive.

But blogging should be good writing, not something that just looks good because it's short. And I love books where every sentence counts, and you never feel it could have been put more concisely. It might be oppressive to have to read straight through a book that is full of snappy sentences, but I'm not so sure books like Sirota's are meant to be read through. Maybe you are supposed to open them at random and read a bracing passage, and then pick it up again later and do the same. The discipline of the book reviewer is not the casual practice of the reader of popular nonfiction. Actually, when I see these political books laid out on the front tables at Borders, I get the impression they are designed primarily to get people to make a purchase to express their identity. You don't need to read them at all.

Lakoff’s a linguist who got a lot of attention in the last election for telling Democrats to concentrate on language, especially his favorite term "framing."

His suggestions included renaming the national debt the “baby tax,” calling income taxes “membership fees” and referring to trial lawyers as “public-protection attorneys.” Remarkable that John Kerry largely ignored him and still came within one state of the White House.

Ha ha. About his new book:

Lakoff uses a parenting metaphor to explain the worldviews that produce these anathematic ideas of liberty: progressive thought stems from the “nurturant parent family” model (based on “empathy and responsibility”), while the conservative outlook is shaped by the “strict father family” model (in which the “moral authority . . . of the father must not be seriously challenged”).

I guess that's better than saying the mommy party and the daddy party. He's letting men in on the Democratic feeling with that "nuturant parent" business. (Oh, yeah, he's framing.) But doesn't the traditional father model ascribed to Republicans involve more personal responsibility than the mother... I mean nurturer... model? You can frame responsiblity over to the liberal side if you're talking about what government will do for you as opposed to how the party perceives the individual.

Anyway, Harshaw observes that Lakoff seems not to know any actual conservatives.

Reading about Lakoff's book made me want to make sure you were aware of this lovely little book (commission earned).

Is there anything else to say about the Beach Boys?

Bruce Handy thinks not, judging by Peter Ames Carlin's "Catch a Wave." So why is there another book on the subject? Handy has a grip on that:

I must own 40 books about the Beatles, another 30 about Bob Dylan, and maybe 20 more about Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. Then there are the CD’s and DVD’s by these artists overflowing my meager New York City shelf space, not to mention the back issues of Mojo and Uncut piled up beside my bed. (Those are popular British music magazines that pretty much cover only 60’s bands, though they occasionally leaven the mix with stories about contemporary groups like the Clash.) All of which raises questions: How many live versions of “Gotta Serve Somebody” do I really need to own? How much more insight do I need into Ringo’s reasons for briefly quitting during the “White Album” sessions? Am I not an adult? What’s wrong with me?

And I thought I had a thing about the 60s. I'm sure I haven't read more than 10 books about the Beatles, 5 about Bob Dylan, and 3 about the Beach Boys.

"He was a loving man doing his best to raise a son..."

"...away from the zany antics of the 1960’s that got in the way of doing a better job with my stepbrother, Jack. He played baseball with me, made sure I did my homework on time, took me to basketball practice and did it all with an air of family-based normalcy and pure love that is not even touched on in Greenfield’s book."

Timothy Leary's son Zach writes in to the NYT Book Review to complain about a biography of his father and a book review of it and to remind us all once again what we ought to do for our kids, which is something that nearly all of us have within reach.

(Here's my old post about the book review.)

"I don’t pretend to know a lot about what’s going on in life most of the time."

"But I had good parents who taught me that hard work and patience were some of the most important things in getting what you wanted."

And we're glad you got what you wanted, Floyd Landis.

Stanley Fish takes on the Kevin Barrett controversy.

Stanley Fish takes on the Kevin Barrett controversy in an op-ed in the NYT today:

Mr. Barrett’s critics argue that academic freedom has limits and should not be invoked to justify the dissemination of lies and fantasies. Mr. Barrett’s supporters (most of whom are not partisans of his conspiracy theory) insist that it is the very point of an academic institution to entertain all points of view, however unpopular.....

Both sides get it wrong. The problem is that each assumes that academic freedom is about protecting the content of a professor’s speech; one side thinks that no content should be ruled out in advance; while the other would draw the line at propositions (like the denial of the Holocaust or the flatness of the world) considered by almost everyone to be crazy or dangerous.

But in fact, academic freedom has nothing to do with content. It is not a subset of the general freedom of Americans to say anything they like (so long as it is not an incitement to violence or is treasonous or libelous). Rather, academic freedom is the freedom of academics to study anything they like; the freedom, that is, to subject any body of material, however unpromising it might seem, to academic interrogation and analysis....

In short, whether something is an appropriate object of academic study is a matter not of its content — a crackpot theory may have had a history of influence that well rewards scholarly scrutiny — but of its availability to serious analysis. This point was missed by the author of a comment posted to the blog of a University of Wisconsin law professor, Ann Althouse: “When is the University of Wisconsin hiring a professor of astrology?” The question is obviously sarcastic; its intention is to equate the 9/11-inside-job theory with believing in the predictive power of astrology, and to imply that since the university wouldn’t think of hiring someone to teach the one, it should have known better than to hire someone to teach the other.

Hey! Fact check, people! Can't you tell the difference between the blogger and the commenters? I've written a lot about the Barrett controversy, but I didn't write that. A commenter called "kpom" did. (Note to the NYT: I want a correction printed!) [CORRECTION! I misread that myself. Sorry! He does say a commenter.]

I have said this:

It's conceivable that [Barrett] could still, as a teacher, present [the 9/11 conspiracy theory] neutrally, just as a university teacher on religion could teach the religion he believes in. My problem is that the teacher believes a crackpot, ridiculous theory and he's using a class on Islam to teach his theory. It's like being hired to teach astronomy and covering astrology and actually being someone who believes in astrology. I feel sorry for the students who think it's worth their time to engage with this material and to subject themselves to the power of someone who would believe something so nutty.

So my problem is that belief in this conspiracy theory reveals such a defective mind that the teacher cannot be trusted, and that the factual truth of the conspiracy theory isn't properly taught in a course about Islam. That many Muslims believe the theory could be part of the course, but the inquiry should be into why they would be drawn into such beliefs, and a teacher who thinks the beliefs are true would not seem to have much grasp of the topic.

And I've said this, as a comment in the thread with the quote that isn't mine:

[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.

Back to Fish:

[T]he truth is that it would not be at all outlandish for a university to hire someone to teach astrology — not to profess astrology and recommend it as the basis of decision-making (shades of Nancy Reagan), but to teach the history of its very long career. There is, after all, a good argument for saying that Shakespeare, Chaucer and Dante, among others, cannot be fully understood unless one understands astrology.

The distinction I am making — between studying astrology and proselytizing for it — is crucial and can be generalized; it shows us where the line between the responsible and irresponsible practice of academic freedom should always be drawn. Any idea can be brought into the classroom if the point is to inquire into its structure, history, influence and so forth. But no idea belongs in the classroom if the point of introducing it is to recruit your students for the political agenda it may be thought to imply.

And this is where we come back to Mr. Barrett, who, in addition to being a college lecturer, is a member of a group calling itself Scholars for 9/11 Truth, an organization with the decidedly political agenda of persuading Americans that the Bush administration “not only permitted 9/11 to happen but may even have orchestrated these events.”

Is the fact of this group’s growing presence on the Internet a reason for studying it in a course on 9/11? Sure. Is the instructor who discusses the group’s arguments thereby endorsing them? Not at all. It is perfectly possible to teach a viewpoint without embracing it and urging it. But the moment a professor does embrace and urge it, academic study has ceased and been replaced by partisan advocacy. And that is a moment no college administration should allow to occur.

I agree heartily right up to the last sentence. It is the responsibility of the teacher not to cross this line. But how is the administration to police it? Students may think a teacher is really pushing a viewpoint when he isn't, and a good teacher can sell his viewpoint without it showing. I could use the Socratic method in the law school classroom and only ask questions but have a position I'm hoping to ingrain. I could run a discussion in which I constantly take the opposite side from the one I want the students to adopt and do it in a way that I think will cause students to internalize the side I'm forcing them to defend. How could the administration find out? What would you want them to do about it? And what percentage of university professors do you think cross this line? You'd need a witch hunt if administrators got serious about Fish's line: "that is a moment no college administration should allow to occur."

More Fish:

Provost Farrell ... is too hung up on questions of content and balance. He thinks that the important thing is to assure a diversity of views in the classroom, and so he is reassured when Mr. Barrett promises to surround his “unconventional” ideas and “personal opinions” with readings “representing a variety of viewpoints."...

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.

[A]cademic 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.

What Farrell did was to rely on the fact that Barrett "assured me that students will be free -- and encouraged -- to challenge his viewpoint," that "Barrett appreciates his responsibility as an instructor," and that "he will attempt to provide students with a classroom experience that respects and welcomes open dialogue on all topics." That is, Farrell accepts Barrett as a strong advocate for one side as long as he maintains an open debate in which the students can speak and argue with him.

Both Fish and Farrell stress process over substance. It's not a question of what subjects come into the classroom. (They ignore the process point I've made, which is that I doubt that administrators could stick to substance neutrality. Again: picture a teacher of white supremacy.) Farrell emphasizes the process of multiple viewpoints and debate. Fish emphasizes the process of academic inquiry and avoiding proselytizing. He would ask the teacher whether he could set aside "your partisan identity" and not "urge political action."

I wonder how far Fish means to take that. I've heard many law professors over the years say that since everyone is really partisan in some way, it's more honest to come right out and say what your positions are. They would portray Fish's ideal professor as a big sneak, posturing as neutral, but really slipping opinion in everywhere. Is Fish saying that professors who take the open approach are wrongly allowing their "partisan identity" to appear in the classroom? It would be terribly repressive for administrators to forbid that. Maybe Fish only means for the professor to refrain from "urg[ing] political action." If so, he's not saying very much. But Fish thinks he's identified a clear line:

The distinction I am making — between studying astrology and proselytizing for it — is crucial and can be generalized; it shows us where the line between the responsible and irresponsible practice of academic freedom should always be drawn. Any idea can be brought into the classroom if the point is to inquire into its structure, history, influence and so forth. But no idea belongs in the classroom if the point of introducing it is to recruit your students for the political agenda it may be thought to imply.

Is that a clear line? The more I look at it, the less clear it seems. It's quite subjective. Each of the last two sentences of his essay contains the phrase if the point is. How are we to tell what the teacher's point really is? A smart person with an agenda knows how to hide it.

UPDATE: From ACTA:

The Times' publication of this piece, written by one of the great old lions of the academic culture wars (recall that Fish chaired the English department at Duke during the years when it was making a serious bid to become the most politically and theoretically avant-garde department in the country), is highly significant. Perhaps the time has finally come for a national discussion about what academic freedom is, why it matters, what it protects, and, crucially, where its privileges end.

Polonius writes:

[W]hat on earth is wrong with professors urging activism? Professors are the canaries in the coal mine; they're often the first ones to see what's gone wrong. If they don't urge activism, there's often no one who will.

Similarly, in the comments here, Ben Wallace writes (and I've added links):

Fish argues that advocacy of ideas is the dividing line between legitimate and illegitimate speech in a university. This is an acceptable normative position but the position is inconsistent with academic freedom as practiced at the UW since the 1890s. Under Fish's standard, Richard T. Ely would have been fired, not defended, for advocating socialism and encouraging activism. Fish's position, if implemented, would undermine a long-settled standard of academic freedom by attempting to eliminate partisan advocacy of ideas.

Is Fish's idea at odds with "The Wisconsin Idea"? If so and if Fish is right, we have a huge problem here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Let me first say that by writing "If so and if Fish is right, we have a huge problem here," I mean to suggest the likelihood that Fish is wrong.

Southern Appeal writes:

[T]his 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....

[T]here’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. ...

[T]he detachment model is deficient [because] 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.

This goes along with something Ben Wallace and I have been writing in the comments here. Ben says:

Under Fish's rule, a faculty member in the South in the 1950s could not embrace and urge the idea that segregation is wrong and that students should act to remedy the situation. The only thing that would be available to a faculty member in that situation [w]ould be dispassionate analysis of the benefits and costs of segregation and a discussion of the different arguments behind segregation. Allowing advocacy and urging students to engage all ideas has demonstrated more effective than efforts to create speech codes, which is essentially what Fish has come up with.

I add:

[I]f the university required teachers to take this dispassionate, neutral stance, it would exclude a certain type of emotive, engaged person who actually is an excellent teacher. The drier, abstract folks would get more jobs in Fish's ideal university... and the students would get more... bored.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Jim Lindgren has a post titled "Astrology, Fish, Althouse, and 9/11 Conspiracy Theories." He's into the astrology subject:

I have actually been studying who believes in astrology. Some indices of conservatism use a belief in astrology as a measure of how conservative a respondent is. Yet Democrats are more likely to believe in astrology than Republicans, with the most conservative subgroup -- conservative Republicans -- being among the least likely to believe in astrology.

That makes me want to remind you of this old post of mine from back when were were all talking about Jerome Armstrong (which may well be what prompted Lindgren's study). I have no idea what the politics of believing in astrology are. I don't see it as having anything to do with politics, but it has something to do with being unscientific. I think there are lots of unscientific folks out there, and neither party is completely anti-science or bound to science.