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  1. Mark Robert Taylor's avatar

    At the risk of self-advertising:… You claim “AI is unusual in degree, not in kind” and “It is not clear…

  2. F.E. Guerra-Pujol's avatar

    Apropos of Sagar’s wish to foist the A.I. industry by its own petard, this article appeared in print in yesterday’s…

  3. Claudio's avatar

    I teach both large courses, like Jurisprudence and Critical Legal Thinking (a.k.a Legal Argumentation), and small seminar-based courses at Edinburgh…

  4. Charles Pigden's avatar

    Surely there is an answer to the problem of AI cheating which averts the existential threat. . It’s not great,…

  5. Mark's avatar

    I’d like to pose a question. Let’s be pessimistic for the moment, and assume AI *does* destroy the university, at…

  6. A in the UK's avatar
  7. Jonathan Turner's avatar

    I agree with all of this. The threat is really that stark. The only solution is indeed in-class essay exams,…

What is going on at Drexel? And is Drexel a real university?

Several readers flagged this other IHE story about political science professor Ciccariello-Maher, whose case I wrote about at CHE last Spring, when Drexel seemed to be doing reasonably well.   His latest "controversial" tweets seem to me vaguely idiotic, but that's not the issue:  the issue is that however insightful or idiotic they are, they led to his being put on "administrative leave" (I assume that means he's out of the classroom but being paid).  Drexel owes the academic community–forget the BreitbartBozos and the DrudgeDumbdumbs, Drexel!–an explanation of what their policies are.  Are there concrete threats of violence?  What is law enforcement doing about them?  Drexel may be a private university, but it's clear that Cicchariello-Maher's speech is constitutionally protected speech on matters of public interest:  his speech is not unlawful, therefore he should not suffer professional sanction because of that speech.  If the situation is so extraodinary in terms of the criminal threats against him and the university that he must be put in hiding, then Drexel needs to broadcast the details to the world, since that really is what fascism looks like:   otherwise lawful faculty speech has so incensed the fascists that the university can not function because of the threats of violence.  Is that's what is going on?

I welcome links and further information from anyone with details about this weird turn of events.

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