I wish to temper Travis’s praise for Stanley Fish’s new book in which Fish appears to be upholding academic rigor. Fish never spoke this way when scholarship and the traditional disciplines were being politicized and destroyed. Indeed, he added fuel to the flames by proclaiming that there is no truth, no objectivity, and no such thing as free speech.

He attacked the National Association of Scholars in the crudest terms, as racist, sexist, and homophobic. Now that the politicization has gone so far that even some leftists have had to acknowledge it — and things might even start swinging in a more traditional direction — Fish supposedly champions academic rigor. The summary of what he argues for, in the quotation Travis cites, is not objectionable on the face of it, but ”bodies of knowledge” carry implications beyond themselves and indeed these will probably arise in a good classroom discussion.

The question is how they are discussed. In addition, if objective truth does not exist, even in potentiality, then there is no way to evaluate bodies of knowledge and little point in studying them. Fish is like Satan in Paradise Lost, superficially appealing at times, but ultimately deadly.