What is the Point of College? Stanley Fish and Alice Dreger in Conversation

What is the point of college? Or stated differently, what is (or what should be) the purpose, the primary goal, of undergraduate education? Some make instrumentalist arguments for college, saying that it prepares students for the work force or to be better citizens, or that college cultivates empathy and related virtues. Others maintain that the pursuit of truth for its own sake provides the sole justification for college. If they are right that truth is the point of college, then what kind of speech and inquiry best supports its pursuit? Should college be a place where freedom of speech is cultivated and expressed, however controversial and even hurtful it might be? Or, are there limitations—social, political, disciplinary—that higher education ought to impose on free speech and inquiry to protect the sensitivities of groups or individuals or to strengthen the advancement of knowledge? How much or how little should politics be present in college classrooms? What about in the rest of campus life? Should teachers and students be activists, and, if so, when and how? Where, ultimately, is the point of college to be found? Stanley Fish, Professor of Law at Florida International University, and Alice Dreger, former professor of clinical medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern University and citizen journalist in East Lansing, Michigan, discuss these and other questions about the role of the university and the importance of freedom of inquiry on college campuses. Moderated by Freedom Project Director, Kathryn Lynch, Wellesley Professor of English.

Stanley Fish

Professor Stanley Fish is one of this country’s leading public intellectuals, and a world-renowned literary theorist and legal scholar. He began his academic career in the English department at the University of California, then became the Kenan Professor of English and Humanities at Johns Hopkins University, where he taught from 1974 to 1985, before becoming Arts and Sciences Professor of English and Professor of Law at Duke. He was dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois from 1999 to 2004. Professor Fish is an extraordinarily prolific author, having written over 200 scholarly books and articles. Professor Fish currently spends half of his time teaching at Florida International College of Law as the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and Law, and at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law as the Floersheimer Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law.

Alice Dreger

Alice Dreger is a writer, historian, and journalist. Formerly a professor at Michigan State and at Northwestern University, she currently works as a news publisher for East Lansing Info, a local news organization that she founded. The author of four books, she has won many fellowships and awards, including a Guggenheim to write her acclaimed Galileo’s Middle Finger, which was an editor’s choice in The New York Times Book Review. Her bylines include The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian and many other distinguished venues. Recently she was named the first winner of Heterodox Academy's Courage Award.