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Keith Whittington
Chronicle of Higher Education
Excerpt: Professors speak and write in a wide range of contexts, in all of which they receive, however unevenly, some level of protection under college policies, traditional academic-freedom principles, and First Amendment doctrine. Those First Amendment protections just took a hit in a newly issued opinion by a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
A professor in the College of Education at North Carolina State University claimed that he had been punished by his employer as a result of his constitutionally protected speech. He had on various occasions complained in faculty deliberations that the program with which he was associated had become too focused on “social justice” at the expense of its intellectual integrity. He was sanctioned for raising those concerns. A majority of the court disagreed that such speech is constitutionally protected.
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Since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, top colleges and universities have faced an onslaught of federal attacks: slashing grant money for research, pressuring schools to end diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, cracking down on visas for international students, and ending graduate program sponsorship for active duty military at top schools. However, some Ivy League universities — the center of many of Trump’s ongoing attacks — have decreased messaging on the potential consequences of these federal directives.
“One thing that’s been clear is that a lot of universities have felt that publicity would bring no advantage or do them no good,” history professor David Bell GS ’91, who has been outspoken about federal actions against universities, said in an interview with The Daily Princetonian.
As a professor who is known to dissent from progressive ideologies that are dominant at universities such as Princeton, where I’ve taught for nearly 40 years, I’m frequently asked by students for advice about how to navigate a campus they worry will be hostile to them. Some are pro-Israel, or politically and socially conservative, or religiously observant.
They fear being treated unfairly by faculty members who are hostile to their beliefs. Many are afraid of being regarded as outcasts by their more liberal or progressive peers. They worry about being excluded from academic opportunities or not treated equitably in social or other extracurricular activities. To these students I say, with regret: You’re right to worry. I’ve seen these things happen.
Universities may be tempted to treat these capabilities as inevitable improvements in education. Students will be able to consume vast amounts of information, more than ever before. But like AI writing itself, such consumption would be vast but shallow. The more interesting possibility, then, is that AI will force universities to rediscover the value of intellectual work that cannot be outsourced.
