BY BRITT PARIS

As AI companies are flailing, financial forecasters warn of an AI bubble. There is an extensive list of harms AI poses to workers, students, communities, the environment, and the social contract, yet campus leaders press forward with AI partnerships and initiatives. Administrators and technology officers have signed multimillion dollar contracts with technology companies offering general purpose chatbots and AI tools over the last year as an AI deployment rash broke out in higher ed.

Earlier this spring, Rebecca Reynolds and I wrote in Academe magazine about how to push for faculty control over AI using contract language.

At Rutgers, we conferred with our members using a survey and developed a contract article proposal we put across the table in late April 2026. This article offers common sense provisions around concerns our members voiced concerning autonomy and decision-making ability in technology use, freedom from surveillance, and the freedom to work, learn, and research with meaningful levers of technological transparency and institutional accountability. With these contract provisions around technology, we hope to join higher education systems with good contract language around AI, to continue to maintain Rutgers’ position as a good place to learn and work, and ultimately to protect our institutional reputation. We hope to develop a bloc of institutions to do the same.

Higher ed is pushing back and must press forward to take power over technology.

Mobilizing Against Technology Overreach

Last month Arizona State University (ASU) faculty reported that their audiovisual content hosted on Canvas had been mined without consent and sloppily combined with other materials like assignments and syllabi using a bespoke university AI application and made available to students for a fee. ASU administration is facing an enormous amount of shame for this and all the bad technology partnerships and contracts they are engaged in.

And, even before Canvas’ massive data breach of early May 2026, 16 states across the country introduced bills curtailing educational technology applications in education settings. There is a deep interest in reining in the massive, unchecked power of technology in society, and higher education institutions have and should be focused on following suit.

Faculty and community members across the country are pushing back. Across the country state legislators have introduced AI laws in the first few months of 2026 covering occupational concerns and use in education. At the University of Colorado–Boulder, faculty reviewed terms of technology vendor contracts accessed through Freedom of Information Act requests, and a subsequent petition pushed administrators to delay the rollout institution’s OpenAI deployment. University workers at the City University of New York  and the University of Michigan successfully bargained for contractual protections from and oversight around AI and associated technologies.

AI Is Not Inevitable

University boosters push AI because they argue it is the inevitable future of work. Yet so far when AI has been used in the workplace, it’s usually higher-level managers using it to the detriment of their work, or forcing other employees to use it to pump up use numbers. Most commonly, employers use AI as an excuse for massive layoffs, only to be left scrambling when AI can’t do the work.

Universities continue to push partnerships with these AI companies—even as students themselves openly mock AI output and its makers as “clankers.” At graduations across the country students have booed CEOs and industry speakers who boost AI as the inevitable future, and jeered administrators who use AI systems. A recent Gallup poll found that Gen Z in particular loathes AI, and in that demographic, usage has flatlined from a year ago.

Further, data centers and other infrastructural concerns that undergird AI are the target of massive public protest and pushbacks. The infrastructure, financial promises, and public consent for these AI tools, especially in education, are very far from inevitable. They make AI very brittle. Across higher education, our workers, our students, and the people they serve should not be forced to be left holding the bag when the bubble bursts.

People who do the work of higher education appreciate, use, and are incredibly clear about the stakes of technology. While AI boosters use “ludditism” as a slur without knowing what it means, attempting to delegitimate those who are critical of these technologies. We are not fearful of technology, nor do we lack technical knowledge. We are incredibly clear about how technologies work and don’t work for the labor we trade with the institution.

What We’re Fighting For

At Rutgers, we are waiting to see what management counters with. It is in the university’s best interest to bring the people who do the work of the institution into the technology decision-making process.

We are not concerned with whether an individual personally uses Microsoft Copilot to clear their inbox or whether they do research on small scale, locally run LLMs. We are not interested in carceral tactics to catch and punish students using AI. Our focus is on whether work—including educational work, research, and service—is valued. Our proposed contact language affirms the value and belief of meaningful education and the future of participation in a society that values peoples’ relationships to one another, healthy environments, and the ability to strive for and thrive in a better world.

Britt Paris is associate professor in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University. She is on the Rutgers AAUP-AFT Faculty Executive Council and is chair of the national AAUP’s ad hoc Committee on Artificial Intelligence in Academic Professions. Her new book is Radical Infrastructure: Imagining the Internet from the Ground Up.