WASHINGTON - In 1892, a Massachusetts court ruled that a policeman’s rights had not been violated by a law forbidding certain political activities by officers. Then Supreme Judicial Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: “The petitioner may have a constitutional right to talk politics, but he has no constitutional right to be a policeman.”

That thought is germane to the controversy about the rights and duties of college professors. Concerning which, Stanley Fish has written an often intelligent but ultimately sly and evasive book, “Save the World on Your Own Time.”