Event Description
As generative AI reshapes how students read, write, and think, the university is compelled to reexamine its fundamental purpose. If writing has long been understood as a mode of thought, what follows when that process can be delegated to, or mediated by, algorithmic systems?
This panel convenes faculty, students, and practitioners to consider how these transformations are unfolding in real time. Drawing on experiences within and beyond the classroom, panelists will assess where AI augments learning and where it diminishes it, how it reconfigures the social dimensions of education, and what these shifts reveal about the aims of undergraduate study.
The discussion will also address broader epistemic and institutional stakes: whether AI compresses intellectual difference into standardized forms, and what it means to teach thinking when the tools that structure it are embedded in corporate infrastructures. At the same time, the panel will consider potential gains, including expanded access to analytical resources, new modes of engagement with complex material, and alternative pathways into academic inquiry.
Event Speakers
- Mario Khreiche, Assistant Professor of Teaching at Teachers College
- Preston Parker, undergraduate student in political science at Columbia University
- Madisson Whitman, Director of Undergraduate Studies at the Center for Science and Society at Columbia University
- Shea Vance, undergraduate student in American studies at Barnard College
Event Information
Free and open to the public; registration required. Please visit the Heyman’s Center website for directions.
Hosted by the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University.
