An Authentic Learning and Assessment Strategy for Interprofessional Education
BY JAMES THOMPSON Think of the term “huddle” and you probably think of professional athletes gathered shoulder to shoulder in a circle, intensely discussing their next play strategy, often at critical junctures of the game. If we explore some of the core elements present, themes of communication, problem solving, strategizing, teamwork, and uniting members in…
AI, University Legitimacy, and the New Social Contract
BY NATE BENNETT When a Northeastern University professor was discovered secretly using generative AI tools to create course materials while prohibiting students from using them, the controversy exposed more than personal hypocrisy. It illustrated a broader legitimacy crisis confronting higher education. Versions of this story surface repeatedly in conversations with colleagues: AI is already woven…
Ask for Reflection, Not Reaction
BY MICHAEL SCHWALBE In a society free from superstition and bigotry, a society in which anti-intellectual reactionaries held no sway, Samantha Fulknecky’s complaint would have gotten no traction. Fulnecky, as most followers of higher education news are aware, is the University of Oklahoma undergraduate who submitted a religious screed to fulfill a reaction paper assignment…
Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Fakery
BY DAVID PICKUS AND ROBERT NIEBUHR Artificial Intelligence (AI) is just a tool, they say. For universities, the idea is that this tool enhances learning. Furthermore, the promise continues that AI is a great equalizer that will increase access to knowledge. Our objection to AI in universities does not center on the march of technology,…
Charlie Kirk Would Have Been a Terrible Teacher
BY MICHAEL SCHWALBE It’s not surprising that Charlie Kirk’s followers would laud him as a champion of free speech even while exploiting his death to stifle the speech of others who saw him as no kind of hero. This is, after all, what partisans are apt to do. The point isn’t to defend a principle—freedom…
On Viewpoint Diversity
BY JOAN W. SCOTT This essay is adapted from the author’s contribution to a forum the Johns Hopkins University AAUP chapter organized to discuss Lisa Siraganian’s Academe article “Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity.” As with so many other liberal principles, the Right has seized and perverted the seemingly benign pluralism implied by “viewpoint diversity” to…
Defending My Convictions—A Response to Lisa Siraganian on Viewpoint Diversity
BY ERIC J. WEINER Although Lisa Siraganian’s recent article ”Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity” includes important considerations for the heterodox academic community, her theses do more to distort the intentions and purposes of heterodoxical teaching and learning than to illuminate its potential conflicts and contradictions. Siraganian’s general critique of “viewpoint diversity” is that it is…
Professing—A Manifesto for Academic Authority in Crisis
BY WILLIAM MATTHEW MCCARTER For more than fifty years, I’ve been learning. For more than twenty years, I’ve been teaching. If at this stage I can’t profess something worth hearing, then I ought to quit and sell insurance. Students don’t pay for PowerPoints or rubrics. They pay for professors who profess. The word itself comes…
A Modest Defense of Viewpoint Diversity
BY DALE E. MILLER In “Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity,” Professor Lisa Siraganian throws down a gauntlet. After offering “seven theses against viewpoint diversity in any of its guises,” she writes that “if viewpoint diversity means committing oneself to a robust debate about truth and values, then the movement should be open to responding to…