Tuesday night, a dream of mine came true. Thor Halvorssen, executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), debated academe's own resident Macchiavelli figure, Stanley Fish, on national television. The occasion: Chris Matthews' nightly MSNBC news show, Hardball. The subject: "Are America's colleges too liberal?" The combatants: woefully mismatched. The outcome: smackdown. I post an annotated edition of the transcript below. I call it "Fisking Fish; or, Mr. T Pities a Fool." (For a version of the transcript written in actual Mr. T-ese, run the transcript through this.)

The segment opens with an invocation of academia's emerging anti-idiotarian muse: Harvard's excellently unflappable Lawrence Summers:

DAVID SHUSTER, HARDBALL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Last week Harvard President Lawrence Summers made what you could call a conservative political statement. Speaking at a prayer service, he warned about the rise of anti-Semitism on college campuses and what he calls an irrational and excessive hostility to the Jewish state. Quote, "profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding support in progressive, intellectual communities." Summers comments were both controversial and rare, because while American universities say they celebrate diversity for multi-cultural centers to freshman orientation sessions that teach tolerance, conservatives say their ideology is not welcome.

Summers has been exceptional in his willingness to speak out against the poisonous anti-Semitism that has become an accepted norm on campuses across the country. He would know something about it. He recently rejected a petition--signed by 69 Harvard faculty members--to divest from Israel. His campus nearly imploded last spring over an ill-advised commencement speech entitled "My American Jihad." And he has been called "the Ariel Sharon of higher education" by an angry and anti-Semitic Cornel West. Summers has posted his speech on the Harvard web site. And here is the Boston Globe's coverage of the speech.

KARL ZINSMEISTER, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE: You will literally have your career burned at the stake if you stray from the liberal orthodoxy on many campuses today, on many campuses today.
SHUSTER: As evidence, Zinsmeister points to a study that examined the voting registration of humanities professors at 21 colleges and universities. 90 percent of the faculty were registered as Democrats or other parties on the left, 10 percent as Republicans or other parties on the right. At Cornell it was 166-6, at Harvard. 151-17, at UCLA, 141-9 and at Penn State, 59-10.
ZINSMEISTER: If it is economics we're talking about, you need to have somebody arguing for government intervention. You need to have someone arguing against intervention. You have to have someone argue for tax cuts. You have to have someone argue against tax cuts. That requires having an appropriate representation of points of view.
SHUSTER: But according to the universities, a professor's own political beliefs do not necessarily influence his or her academic interests and teaching style.

Apt witch hunt metaphor from Zinsmeister. As one of academe's rare resident witches, I know whereof I speak. The AEI study is not available on line, alas. But you can order the issue of American Enterprise Magazine that published the results. For an excellent parsing of what the study means, check out John Leo's column.

Enter the University of Illinois at Chicago's own Professor Fish, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Professor of English and Criminal Justice, Distinguished Visiting Professor of the John Marshall School of Law, with a Spin Doctorate in Sophistry:

STANLEY FISH, UNIV. OF ILLINOIS, CHICAGO: You cannot tell from the way a person votes on whether they are for or against affirmative action or assisted suicide or any of the other hot button issues what they will think about the question who or what were the causes of World War I.

Technically, no, you can't. But no one is arguing that you can. What they are arguing is that the extreme left-of-center political homogeneity of the American professoriate bespeaks an absence of intellectual diversity on campus. What they are arguing is that there is a subtle but very real connection between how a person votes and how he or she is likely to think about such questions as who or what caused World War I. And they are right. That's why you just don't find libertarian literary critics or free market gender theorists on campus. It's not that schools set out to hire Democrats. It's that the people they hire think in ways that virtually ensure that they are Democrats. Someone who studies medieval literature from a Marxist-feminist perspective is a very hot commodity to hiring committees. That person will by definition never be a Republican.

SHUSTER: You also may not be able to tell what they think of contemporary campus controversies. It's worth noting that Lawrence Summers, in addition to defending Israel and calling on students to show more respect for the military, himself served in the Clinton cabinet. (on-camera): So the question is, are conservatives the only minority not tolerated on America's college campuses or does the right see persecution where none exists? I'm David Shuster for HARDBALL in Washington. (END VIDEOTAPE)

Enter Thor Halvorssen. He is armed with evidence. He is dangerous. He is not spinning.

MATTHEWS: Thor Halvorssen is the executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and Stanley Fish is the dean of liberal arts at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Mr. Halvorssen, I want to ask you to make your case in particular. State the particulars that make the case that American college campuses are controlled by the left.
THOR HALVORSSEN, FDN. FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS IN EDUCATION: There is a ferocious assault on freedom of speech, voluntary association and it manifests itself in policies from speech codes. Two-thirds of college campuses have speech codes that make elicit all sorts of words and phrases and points of views that if these speech codes were applied equally, they would not exist for one second. The double standard is unbelievable. Beyond the speech codes, there's freshman orientation that is more equal to indoctrination that should be more in China, in North Korea than in American universities. Beyond that, student judicial procedures that do not allow for due process. Most of this is aimed typically at students who are irreverent, unorthodox and those students in today's climate on college campuses tend to be Christians, conservatives and essentially anyone who does not buy into the politically correct orthodoxy.

Apart from the fact that the MSNBC typist cannot spell, the thing to note about this passage is how much Halvorssen was able to pack into the small space of his allotted sound byte. Thor has come to Hardball prepared to fight. He has facts, issues, and statistics at his fingertips and he is not afraid to use them. Fish, by contrast, has come to Hardball with the apparent aim of playing dumb. As evidenced from his first comment, Fish is prepared only to deny. Denial will be Fish's interlocutory pattern throughout this debate; it's an arrogant rhetorical strategy, one that casts the viewer as a gullible rube, and one that backfires as a result.

MATTHEWS: Let's go to Stanley Fish, your response. Dean, let me ask you, do you agree with any of that?
FISH: I certainly agree that the large proportion of faculty members in the number of departments would be 90 percent liberal. The question is, what does this mean for instruction in the schools or for the hiring practices that brought these people to the campus and my answer would be nothing whatsoever.

The gullible rube nods. Nothing whatsoever! What a relief! Academe is not a crook! But the viewer with a brain isn't so easy, and Fish offers this viewer nothing at all to work with besides his not-so-good word. It is not plausible that academe just "happened" to get so overwhelmingly liberal. It is not plausible that hiring practices had nothing to do with it. They clearly have everything to do with it. Nor is it plausible that the quality and content of instruction on a single-party campus are not affected by the dronelike homogeneity of the faculty. Take away intellectual and political diversity and you take away debate, challenge, the need to know what you think and why you think it, along with the ability to explain and defend your ideas to those not of like mind. Take away difference of opinion and variety of belief and you blunt education itself. You can't learn in an environment where everyone thinks the same. But you can be in denial about what the environment is, and that's what Fish would have us be. His strategy of categorical denial is designed to induce a state of denial in the viewer. Don't think for a minute though that Fish himself doesn't understand the connection between the faculty's politics and the education that faculty delivers. He gets it, and he gets it way better than you and I do. He just doesn't want to be held publicly accountable for it. He likes things the way they are. The status quo suits him. He is famous within it. It confers power upon him. It pays him very, very well.

MATTHEWS: What about in decisions made by the faculties which Mr. Halvorssen has just been mentioning, all those decisions that he said reflect a liberal point of view? Aren't they reflecting the liberal makeup of faculties?
FISH: Which decisions are you referring to?

There's playing dumb. And then there is playing dumber.

HALVORSSEN: We're talking about codes. We're talking about policies that make it very difficult for students... FISH: There are no codes.

There is denial. And then there is flagrant dishonesty. Not a good move when your opponent is armed with facts, issues, and statistics and is not afraid to use them. A suicidal move when your opponent is armed with facts, issues, and statistics about your own deanly self and is not afraid to use them.

HALVORSSEN: That's simply not true and Stanley Fish himself is a perfect example of someone who has labored intensely to make sure that conservatives, Christians, anyone who does not agree with his point of view does not get hired.
MATTHEWS: Give a particular there. Give a particular there (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
HALVORSSEN: In 1990, Stanley Fish, when 46 professors at Duke University got together to form a chapter of the National Association of Scholars, Stanley Fish wrote to the provost saying none of these people should be allowed to serve on hiring committees because they are sexist, racist and homophobic. There's a particular for you.

Advantage, Thor.

FISH: I did say that. And I also said the reason was--sure I did. The reason was that these people had announced in advance that certain kinds of new forms of studies should not be allowed on campus, were illegitimate. And therefore they had decided in advance of any case how they were going to vote and therefore, had disqualified themselves in my view.

I am moved to wonder: did Fish wish he could take that back the second it slid out of his spindoctoral mouth? Because from my gullible rubelike point of view, it seems like he just defended himself by accusing himself of the very unethical behavior he is being accused of.

HALVORSSEN: So essentially Stanley Fish decides what is going to be taught and not taught. Now if anyone on the right had made the same point of view, they would have driven out of the universities. Instead, you are a dean of a university and you have a huge budget.

Notice that Chris Matthews has disappeared. Notice that the conversation is now no longer mediated by a third party and that it is no longer nominally a stately point-counterpoint sort of thing. Notice that Thor addresses Fish directly here. The debate has become personal. I am moved to wonder: did Fish realize at the time that he had been lured into single rhetorical combat with a man who would like nothing better than to tear him--figuratively speaking--into a million sophistical pieces? Did Fish realize that he had--figuratively speaking--risen to Thor's bait?

FISH: I have a huge budget. I'm a dean of a university. But as I have said recently, I have interviewed and hired 100 to 200 people since I have been here. I haven't the slightest idea of the ideological political commitment of any of them and because of the way the search process is scripted, it would be impossible for me to know. There's no opportunity to have any even guess at what the political inclinations of candidates for positions are.

Fish should tell this to Juan Lopez, a politically incorrect political science professor at UIC whose tenure bid he recently squelched

HALVORSSEN: There are book after book written on this subject. Academic and zealotry and academic freedom by Neil Hamilton, the shadow university by (UNINTELLIGIBLE)
FISH: I know the book.

It seems that Fish does not like being lectured to. He does not like the insinuation that there may be books he has not read. He cannot allow such insinuations to pass unchallenged; he cannot even allow them to pass uninterrupted. His scholarly pride is on the line. He must defend his well-read honor. He must announce that he has read the book. I am moved to wonder: did Fish realize at the time that his posture of total innocence would not be helped by admitting he has read the literature that makes it impossible to (honestly) adopt a posture of total innocence? Did he realize that he had--again--risen to Thor's bait? Did the renowned Milton scholar reflect, perchance, that pride goeth before a fall? I suspect, at the very least, that he made a connection between Hardball and hell.

HALVORSSEN: Book after book that documents instances of this sort of hiring that-people wink, wink, nod, nod. They simply do not hire on the basis of open, critical minds. Instead, most of them want to clone themselves. You do not have the right to use the public purse to create ideological fortresses where you clone yourself. I'm not saying that we need to...
FISH: I agree. I agree (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

Game, set, match: Thor. Fish agrees, he agrees.

MATTHEWS: Dean, go ahead. Respond to that charge that you are creating clones. You're making kids come out of your campus think like the liberal professors think.
FISH: First of all, what the liberal professors think on the basis of their voting records has nothing to do with what those same professors might be teaching. I voted for Al Gore...
MATTHEWS: Isn't that a straw man? Isn't that a straw man Dean? Let's face it, I had 60 some hours of philosophy. I'd like to know that I was taught the... FISH: I though you were going to let me finish.
MATTHEWS: No, I'm not. At this point I'd like you to get back to the point here. Our liberal professors who believe in liberal philosophy and liberal economics and liberal interpretations of history, teaching what they believe or not teaching what they believe? That's what I think is the case here.

It's official. Fish is being eaten alive.

FISH: You don't teach what you politically believe.
MATTHEWS: No, what you believe (UNINTELLIGIBLE) economically.
FISH: ... what you think to be the truth of the matter. That's what I teach about 17th century poetry and that has nothing to do with the way I vote or my political views on hot button issues. Nothing whatsoever.

There's that phrase again, "Nothing whatsoever." As in, Fish's utter inability to give a credible explanation of academe's little bias problem has nothing whatsoever to do with his complete annihilation on national television by one Thor Halvorssen, who is half his age and has twice his conviction. I am moved to wonder: did Fish realize at any point during this discussion that he was debating--or failing to debate--academe's worst nightmare? Did he recognize in Thor a force that will shape academe's future?

HALVORSSEN: It's a little rich to say that with the instances that are shown in the "American Enterprise" magazine study when you have something like 166 faculty members on one side and five on the other. I agree with Professor Fish that in fact one can't necessarily tell how someone's going to teach. But it's certainly an indicator. And people talk about hiring practices and typically hiring practices where it demonstrates a bias or a hostile environment. What I'd like to know is, Stanley Fish, why is it that we see such an enormous bias? Why is it that these numbers are the way they are? It's a little rich to say that you see nothing from this. I had a case last week...
FISH: You want an answer to your question or do you want to go on forever?
MATTHEWS: Go on Professor.
FISH: When I entered the academy in '62, most of my senior colleagues were, in fact, conservative because they had gotten their degrees from the '30's when all of the members of the professoriate came from a certain class. After the GI Bill of Rights and other social movements, this all changed so that people like me, children of immigrants and people who came from labor union backgrounds came into the academy. They brought their politics with them into the ballot box but not necessarily into the classroom.

Fish gets mercy air time.

You do have a situation where right now 90 percent of the faculty members will self identify as left of center. All that you have to do to remedy that is to have bright young conservatives and there are plenty of them, apply for these jobs and go into the work...

Time's up.

HALVORSSEN: As they do and they apply all the time and they don't get hired. They apply all the time. Anywhere from Harvard where Peter Berkowitz is a perfect example of someone who was turned down for tenure.
FISH: And you're now going to mention John Lott (ph). John Lott and Peter Berkowitz...
HALVORSSEN: You can name them. That's the beauty of this.

How much bait can this Fish swallow?

FISH: I opposed (UNINTELLIGIBLE)
HALVORSSEN: Professor Fish can name single professors who are deemed conservative yet there are hundreds of thousands on the other side. How can you possibly be able to name--what are you going to name next Harvey Mansfield at Harvard? That you can name Harvey Mansfield.
MATTHEWS: Let me get back to this, I'm the referee at this point. Professor, let me ask you this. I'm going to give you a chance...
FISH: ... on the basis of your complaint.
MATTHEWS: Can I get the professor to make a point here? If you don't want to, you don't have to. It seems to me that when young men and women go away to college, they learn something they didn't learn before. They may come from liberal families. They may be red diaper babies for all I know. They go to campuses and they're exposed to a different mentality, a different world view, a different Zeitgeist if you will.
FISH: As they should.
MATTHEWS: Shouldn't--right. That's what I want you to say. Isn't part of education being exposed to something different than you grew up with and if you grew up in rural Kansas and you're a conservative and you go to a campus and you meet some liberal professors, isn't that a good thing for a kid to be (UNINTELLIGIBLE) to be educated?
HALVORSSEN: Intellectual diversity is at the heart of the life of the mind. What you have on college campuses is one monolithic orthodoxy. You do not have intellectual diversity and saying that there are two or three people with a different perspective is not intellectual diversity.
MATTHEWS: Professor Fish, I really directed the question to Professor Fish to make your point. What is the advantage of a liberal education?
FISH: The advantage of a liberal education is you learn techniques of inquiry. It is not that you learn how to think about matters in a certain way. Professor James Murphy in the op-ed of September 15 made the right point. Teaching civic education, he said, is subversive of the moral purpose of a university.

Finally,with much social engineering on Matthews' part, Fish gets a word in edgewise. It gets him exactly nowhere, though, because Fish is so very ready to allow Thor to throw his words back at him:

HALVORSSEN: Will you agree that politicized freshman orientation is also subversive?
FISH: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) bad, it should not be allowed.

How appropriate that in the end Fish should be swallowing his own words. No one else on the show swallowed a single thing he said.

MATTHEWS: Professor, thank you very much. Professor, thank you for your patience today.
FISH: One last thing Chris.
MATTHEWS: No, time's up.
FISH: Thank you very much.
MATTHEWS: Thank you Professor Fish for your patience in putting up with some difficult conversation.

Thanks indeed. If this is the best the academic establishment can do in the face of articulate opposition, the public deserves to know. This fisking has been a public service announcement.