David Estrada and Amaya Taylor
Daily Princetonian
On Friday, approximately 200 students and community members gathered at the Fountain of Freedom to protest against the Trump administration’s immigration policies and the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents. The protest was the first campus rally of the spring semester and was part of a “national shutdown” initially organized by protesters in Minneapolis.
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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.