highered

Platformer
"Stanford remains deeply concerned about efforts, including lawsuits and congressional investigations, that chill freedom of inquiry and undermine legitimate and much needed academic research – both at Stanford and across academia."
So deeply concerned, in fact, that they've fired everyone involved in that legitimate research!
motherjones.com
One student I met outside the Low Library after Johnson’s speech, who only identified himself by an initial, K, summed up the dissonance between Johnson’s description of the protesters and the reality of the encampment: “It’s as if there’s some kind of armed insurrection here—there isn’t,” K told me. “There’s maybe, like, 100 students sleeping in tents on a lawn.”
I think it’s good to keep in mind who really has power in these situations. Is it the administration and politicians who can direct militarized police or college kids? Showing up on campus to get some headlines while punching down is awful.
Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000
A clearer-eyed view of what has happened in the last two years is that a few companies have amassed enormous amounts of data (mostly taken non-consensually) and the capital to buy the computing resources to train enormous models which, in turn, can be used to output facsimiles of the kinds of interactions represented in the data.
I think a better understanding of how generative AI products are produced would help clear up some of this magical thinking that’s happening.
oregonlive.com
The disintegration of the Pac-12 has been an entirely avoidable tragedy brought on by the craven machinations of people who, it can only be assumed, do not love college sports very much at all.
This. A few TV execs maximizing ad revenue and a handful of administrators who must be under pressure to maximize football profits are making terrible decisions.

Update (9/8): OSU and WSU sue to stop schools who chose to leave from voting on the future of the conference.
Slate
West Virginians, trapped in the clutches of economic hardship, find themselves mercilessly shackled to a state most can ill afford to abandon, left to suffer the full weight of the WVU administration’s harrowing decisions. We will learn only subjects aligned with the preferences of the rich, driven by their financial motivations.
I work for an R1 land grant university and I like to think those designations help keep the university on track. Seeing WVU make students pay the price for poor leadership is sobering.
npr.org
The decision reverses decades of precedent upheld over the years by narrow court majorities that included Republican-appointed justices. It could end the ability of colleges and universities — public and private — to do what most say they still need to do: consider race as one of many factors in deciding which of the qualified applicants is to be admitted.
It shouldn't be surprising that a court with no ethical standards makes unethical rulings but it's still disgusting to see billionaires get what they paid for: hurting the vulnerable and shoring up the wealthy's already abundant advantages.
arxiv.org
Our findings reveal that these detectors consistently misclassify non-native English writing samples as AI-generated, whereas native writing samples are accurately identified. Furthermore, we demonstrate that simple prompting strategies can not only mitigate this bias but also effectively bypass GPT detectors, suggesting that GPT detectors may unintentionally penalize writers with constrained linguistic expressions.
Interesting look at the effectiveness of GPT detectors universities are using to find cheating. Especially this bit:
While detectors were initially effective, a second-round self-edit prompt (“Elevate the provided text by employing literary language”) applied to ChatGPT-3.5 significantly reduced detection rates from 100% to 13%...
Ouch, not sure how these services can get away with charging money for AI detection if it's that easy to bypass.
Science
"University campuses as well as elementary through high schools, are supposed to be places where students can flourish—places where ideas can be generated and learned. They can’t serve this purpose if they are environments of mortal fear."
We can’t continue to watch this without changing anything.
Some Words To Not
"Letting an AI system do this work for you means giving up all of that. It's like sending a robot to do your WestWorld vacation for you, and just sharing the photos it took on your Instagram feed. Behaving in this way is not at all about cheating, it is about missing the whole point. If you care about having clear ideas and becoming better at what you do, you want to be writing."
I don't see anything in this post.
stanforddaily.com
"Stanford’s communicative infrastructure cannot depend on the judgment of social media companies or volunteer maintainers of servers, and social media is too important for our university to leave on the hands of profit-making enterprises or well-meaning nonprofits."
I think all institutions should be considering this if they believe social media is an important way to communicate.
Bryan Alexander
"More than one third of Americans turn to Facebook for news, which is a big chunk of the population. Around one fourth fire up YouTube for this purpose.  Following those is Twitter, then smaller and smaller numbers for the rest."
A look at social media preferences through the lens of higher ed.
gazettetimes.com
"Our students in general have been extremely mindful of health issues and I hope that continues, not only for students but for community members throughout the county."
No, the university made the decision to open campus in a pandemic with full knowledge that outbreaks are happening at campuses across the country. They are risking the health of the community and they shouldn’t frame it as up to the students.
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