If a professor rants on Facebook that the Republican party’s base is comprised of white supremacists and “angry, white Southern men with reactionary views on race,” are his comments within the bounds of academic freedom? If a professor is offered a job by a university, but that university soon finds out about disturbing Tweets written by the professor, should the university be able to rescind its job offer? What if a physics professor, instead of actually teaching physics, turns his class into Left-wing Activism 101?

Stanley Fish, former head of Duke University’s English department and current law professor at Florida International, helps to answer those questions with his latest book, Versions of Academic Freedom: From Professionalism to Revolution. Fish sets out to define academic freedom and determine its limits. He highlights five predominant schools of thought on the topic, some of which give carte blanche to professors to not only say what they want, but to push their particular brand of ideology inside and outside of the classroom.

In today’s Pope Center Clarion Call, George Leef reviews Versions of Academic Freedom and praises Fish for providing a “cool and sober analysis of the claims people make on behalf of academic freedom.” Leef agrees with Fish that the bounds of academic freedom should in many ways be based on the nature of the job and the employment contract between university and professor. As Fish writes in his book, “[Professors’] obligations and aspirations are defined by the distinctive task — the advancement of knowledge — they are trained and paid to perform, that is, by contract and by the course catalog rather than by a vision of democracy or world peace.”

Read Leef’s full review of Versions of Academic Freedom here.