Stanley Fish - Academic Career

Academic Career

Fish earned a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1959, and an M.A. from Yale University in 1960. He completed his Ph.D. in 1962, also at Yale University. He taught English at the University of California at Berkeley and Johns Hopkins University before becoming Arts and Sciences Professor of English and Professor of Law at Duke University from 1986 to 1998. From 1999 to 2004 he was Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, as well as serving as Distinguished Visiting Professor at The John Marshall Law School from 2000 until 2002. He also held joint appointments in the Departments of Political Science and Criminal Justice, and was the chairman of the Religious Studies Committee. During his tenure there, he recruited professors well respected in the academic community and garnered a lot of attention for the College. After resigning as dean in a high-level dispute with the state of Illinois over funding UIC, Fish spent a year teaching in the Department of English. The Institute for the Humanities at UIC named a lecture series in his honor, which is still ongoing. In June 2005, he accepted the position of Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and Law at Florida International University, teaching in the FIU College of Law. In November 2010 he joined the Board of Visitors of Ralston College, a start-up institution in Savannah, Georgia. He has also been a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science since 1985 .