Academic Standards in an Age of Mistrust

Abstract:

This article looks at a three-way debate between Robert Post, Judith Butler, and Stanley Fish over the role of academic standards in our understanding of academic freedom. It argues that skepticism about such standards, anticipated by Post and embraced by Butler and Fish in the early 2000s, foreshadowed the growing doubts about academic freedom and higher education that are now recognized as a crisis. The debate also illustrates why effective responses to this crisis have been hard to come by, particularly for those working in the humanities, as academic trends have played into the hands of opponents of academic freedom on both sides of the political divide.

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