There's No Such Thing as Free Speech: and It's a Good Thing, Too.

• Author: Fischer, Raymond L.

Stanley Fish is a founder of Reader Response Theory, a renowned Milton expert, and arts and sciences professor of English and professor of law at Duke University. In this collection of articles, speeches, and reviews, five chapters consist of essays written for a series of debates he had with conservative Dinesh D'Souza, author of Illiberal Education and a former Reagan Administration policy analyst. Sponsored by student organizations, the debates took place between September, 1991, and March, 1992, on five college campuses, exploring political correctness, neoconservative polemics, the affirmative action backlash, anti-multiculturalism, and speaking in code.

Fish believes such terms as "national unity," "cultural coherence," and "harmonious citizenship" have taken the place of outright appeals to prejudice found in the racist writings of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and coded words and expressions like "fairness," "merit," and "common values" allow those who use them to "hold up clean hands while participating in dirty work." While the five essays are brilliantly written, the impact would have been more provocative if Fish and D'Souza had published both sides of the debate collaboratively. Reading only Fish's views is like listening to one end of a telephone conversation.

Fish maintains that the First Amendment has become a refuge for scoundrels. He evaluates the Supreme Court's decision concerning Larry Flynt's Hustler ad that parodied Jerry Falwell and his mother and the 1985 Seventh Circuit Court's ruling in which an Indianapolis ordinance defining pornography was struck down (American Booksellers Assoc. Inc. v...