Walk into almost any office on a campus right now and you’ll hear the same thing: “We’re experimenting with AI.” Someone is drafting social posts in ChatGPT. Someone else is piloting a chatbot for admissions FAQs. Another is tinkering with predictive models in the CRM.
These efforts are well intentioned, but nearly three years into the ready availability of generative AI tools, higher ed needs to understand that dabbling isn’t enough anymore.
Higher education is under immense pressure. From the demographic cliff to the search cliff, the drop in international enrollment to the decline in the public perception of higher education, our industry is fraught with challenges. When we combine these challenges with the escalating expectations from students and families and the “experience economy,” we’re setting ourselves up to fall dangerously behind.
AI can be part of the solution to those challenges. But if we limit ourselves to scattered experiments, we risk wasting resources and missing the opportunity to use AI as a true strategic advantage.
The Risks of Dabbling
When AI adoption is fragmented, several challenges emerge:
Duplicated work and tool sprawl. Different units adopt different tools, leading to confusion, inconsistent data and hidden costs.
Inconsistent brand voice. Without shared guidelines, AI-generated content can erode the consistency of a university’s storytelling.
Ethical blind spots. Dabbling often means no governance. Sensitive student data can inadvertently end up in AI tools.
Staff frustration. When AI feels like extra work instead of a supportive tool, teams become skeptical. That makes adoption harder later.
Lost momentum. When experiments aren’t connected to measurable outcomes, leadership may conclude that AI “doesn’t work here.”
The paradox is this: Dabbling may feel safer, but it is actually riskier than intentional adoption.
What Intentional Adoption Looks Like
Intentional adoption doesn’t mean rushing into automation or replacing staff. It means aligning AI with institutional goals, building literacy across teams, creating ethical guardrails and sharing results transparently.
Take admissions chatbots. Many institutions piloted them to handle high-volume FAQs. Some fizzled out because there was no plan for training, governance or integrating insights back into the enrollment strategy. But at campuses where chatbots were tied to yield goals, tested with student input and connected to human follow-up, they became powerful tools for reducing melt and increasing student satisfaction.
Or consider content creation. I’ve seen marketing teams use AI to repurpose one student story into dozens of assets, like email copy, Instagram posts, video scripts. When done thoughtfully, this allowed teams to do more with the same staff, freeing time for higher-level strategy. When done haphazardly, it can lead to a flood of off-brand content that students recognize as AI, eroding trust.
A Framework for Readiness
So how can institutions move from dabbling to adopting? One approach I use with teams is the AI Maturity Matrix.
The matrix evaluates readiness across six dimensions—vision, leadership support, skills, governance, collaboration, and technology—and places organizations on a five-stage curve:
Nascent: AI is barely leveraged, or individual experiments happen in silos.
Developing: Small pilots exist but aren’t connected to strategy.
Scaling: Multiple projects are coordinated and tied to goals.
Optimized: AI is part of daily workflows, with governance and training in place.
Transformational: AI is a true differentiator, fueling innovation and efficiency across the institution.
Most higher ed teams that I speak with fall in the second and third categories. They are experimenting and maybe scaling, but without the governance or strategy to optimize. The matrix helps teams see their starting point clearly and, more importantly, identify what it will take to get to the next stage.
The key is not to leap from nascent to transformational overnight, but instead move steadily, stage by stage, building capacity along the way.
A Call to Action for Higher Ed Leaders
The issue isn’t whether higher education will use AI; it’s whether we’ll use it well.
If you’re leading a team, here are three questions to start with:
Do we know where we stand on the AI maturity curve?
Are our current experiments connected to our overarching goals?
What’s one step we could take in the next 30 days to build intentional capacity?
These questions are urgent. Students are already comparing their campus experience to the seamless, personalized interactions they get from Amazon, Spotify or Netflix. Faculty and staff are already using AI tools in their personal lives, whether institutions acknowledge it or not. The longer we leave AI adoption uncoordinated, the greater the gap grows between what higher ed delivers and what students expect.
I still hear from people who believe AI is a passing fad. Meanwhile, the world around us is shifting in significant ways that have the potential to leave us far behind. Institutions must approach their AI adoption with clarity and intentionality. Those that treat it as a novelty risk being left behind.
The time for dabbling is over. The time for intentional adoption is now.
Jaime Hunt is president of Solve Higher Ed and an adjunct faculty member at West Virginia University teaching courses in higher ed marketing and emerging media.
Beginning next week, First Amendment News (FAN) will be moving to Substack. Be sure to sign up and follow us there for future installments!
“No American President has ever before issued executive orders like the one at issue in this lawsuit . . . The instant case presents an unprecedented attack on . . . foundational principles. . . . Here, deciding what process was due to plaintiff is unnecessary, because no process was provided.” — Perkins Coie LLP v. Department of Justice (Dist. Ct., D.C., May 2)
“[T]he Court found that Ms. Rumeysa Ozturk has demonstrated a substantial claim of a violation of due process.” — Ozturk v. Hyde (Dist. Ct., VT, May 16)
Maxim: #1: Vagueness and due process cannot coexist, at least not in any system of constitutional justice worthy of the name.
Maxim #2: The broader the law’s sweep, the greater the likelihood that it was designed to be arbitrarily punitive.
It is undeniable: Many of Donald Trump’s executive orders run wildly afoul of basic tenets of fairness. Time and again, he has ordered his subordinates to enforce orders that are shockingly vague and disturbingly broad. Both in their conception and execution, such orders patently violate the commands of the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments. And yet, the public and the courts are asked to countenance such abridgments of law in the name of unfettered executive prerogative.
Clarity and precision in lawmaking are fundamental to any system of justice. That call for clarity, which traces back at least to Roman law, finds expression in Montesquieu’s “Spirit of Laws” and William Blackstone’s “Commentaries on the Laws of England.” Laws must be “plainly and perspicuously penned,” is how Blackstone tagged it.
In “FederalistNo. 62,” James Madison condemned those laws that were “incoherent that they cannot be understood.” The idea is rooted in basic fairness, in due process of law. Such a process is especially important in the First Amendment context.
Whether it be in executive orders directed at DEI practices, law firms, universities, libraries, or immigrants, among others, the basic problem of vagueness is the constitutional cancer present in all of them.
As Justice Thurgood Marshall made clear in 1972’s Grayned v. City of Rockford, vagueness offends fairness because (i) it provides no meaningful warning to ordinary persons as to “what is prohibited,” (ii) it provides no “explicit standards” to law enforcement officials, judges, and juries necessary to avoid “arbitrary and discriminatory application,” and (iii) vague laws chill protected speech insofar as the “boundaries of the forbidden areas [are not] clearly marked.”
Justice William Brennan explained the First Amendment importance of that principle in 1963’s NAACP v. Button: “Standards of permissible . . . vagueness are strict in the area of free expression. . . [I]n the area of First Amendment freedoms, the existence of a [vague mandate is] susceptible of sweeping and improper application.”
In the unconstitutional process, lawyers, scientists, librarians, universities, law firms and others are chilled into silence — and that is precisely the point.
The evils of vagueness, among other constitutional wrongs, were thoughtfully identified by federal district court Judge Adam B. Abelson in the recent Maryland District Court case National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education v. Trump. In relevant part, Judge Abelson began:
This Court remains of the view that Plaintiffs have shown a strong likelihood of success on the merits of their facial free speech and vagueness claims . . . The Challenged Provisions forbid government contractors and grantees from engaging in “equity-related” work and from “promoting DEI” in ways the administration may consider to violate antidiscrimination laws; they demand that the “private sector” “end . . . DEI” and threaten “strategic enforcement” to effectuate the “end[ing]” of “DEI”; and they threaten contractors and grantees with enforcement actions with the explicit purpose of “deter[ring]” such “programs or principles.”
Judge Adam B. Abelson
Thereafter, he emphasized that the Court was
…deeply troubled that the Challenged Provisions, which constitute content-based, viewpoint-discriminatory restrictions on speech (in addition to conduct), have the inherent and ineluctable effect of silencing speech that has long been, and remains, protected by the First Amendment. And they do so through impermissibly vague directives that exacerbate the speech-chilling aspects of the Challenged Provisions.
To elucidate that point, he added:
Historically, the metaphor used to describe the effect of laws that restrict speech is “chill.” The more apt metaphor here is “extinguish.” Part of the explicit purpose and effect of the Challenged Provisions is to stifle debate — to silence selected viewpoints, selected discourse — on matters of public concern. They forbid government contractors and grantees from engaging in discourse — including speech such as teaching, conferences, writing, speaking, etc. — if that discourse is “related” to “equity. ” And they direct the “private sector” to “end” diversity, to “end” equity, and to “end” inclusion. See J21 Order § 4(b) (directing agencies to “encourage the private sector to end . . . DEI”). “End” is not a mere “chill.” “Deter[rence]” is not a side-effect of the Challenged Provisions; their explicit goal is to “deter” not only “programs” but “principles” — i.e. ideas, concepts, and values. After all, the opposite of inclusion is exclusion; the opposite of equity is inequity; and, at least in some forms, the opposite of diversity is segregation.
Such are but some of the evils rooted in many of Trump’s executive orders. Those affronts to due process and First Amendment principles are so obvious as to render their design intentional (see “Trump’s ‘So what?’ stratagem,” FAN 470).
Trump’s Justice Department defends such lawlessness by procedural obfuscation coupled with political rhetoric and claims of unrestrained executive prerogative. When that fails they take cover by being evasive, as revealed in oral arguments in the Second Circuit case of Ozturk v. Hyde:
The appeals court judges pushed . . . [Department of Justice attorney Drew] Ensign on whether or not the Trump administration believed that both students’ speech was lawful speech.
“We have not taken a position on that,” Ensign told the panel of three judges, saying concerns over where the students’ cases should be heard were more important.
“Help my thinking along,” Judge Barrington D. Parker then said. “Take a position.”
“Your honor, I don’t have authority to take a position on that right now,” Ensign replied.
Drew Ensign
In the unconstitutional process, lawyers, scientists, librarians, universities, law firms and others are chilled into silence — and that is precisely the point.
Consider as well this from an article in The New York Times by Stephanie Saul:
The Trump administration is set to cancel the federal government’s remaining federal contracts with Harvard University — worth an estimated $100 million, according to a letter that is being sent to federal agencies on Tuesday. The May 27 letter [from the U.S. General Services Administration] also instructs agencies to “find alternative vendors” for future services.
The additional planned cuts, outlined in a draft of the letter obtained by The New York Times, represented what an administration official called a complete severance of the government’s longstanding business relationship with Harvard.
The letter is the latest example of the Trump administration’s determination to bring Harvard — arguably the country’s most elite and culturally dominant university — to its knees, by undermining its financial health and global influence. Since last month, the administration has frozen about $3.2 billion in grants and contracts with Harvard. And it has tried to halt the university’s ability to enroll international students.
This episode features a conversation with Cass Sunstein, the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School and former administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. His recent working paper, ‘Our Money or Your Life!’ Higher Education and the First Amendment,’ explores the First Amendment constraints on federal funding to American universities.
In the last few weeks, the Trump administration has made several announcements that it is withholding a significant amount of federal funds from specific universities, notably Columbia University and Harvard University, and that those funds will not be released until those universities comply with a set of demands. Harvard received a letter on April 11 demanding changes in Harvard’s governance, faculty hiring practices, student admissions practices, viewpoint diversity among the faculty, and student disciplinary policies, among other things. On May 5, the Secretary of Education sent a letter to Harvard informing the university that the federal government will award it no grants for scholarly research in the future. Reportedly, there is more than $2 billion dollars at stake.
On the podcast we talk through what the Trump administration is doing, what the consequences are for Harvard and other affected universities, and what constitutional issues are raised by the administration’s actions in denying Harvard access to federal research funds. In the process, we get a short course on First Amendment doctrine relating to viewpoint discrimination and unconstitutional conditions.
Trump’s lackey: FCC Chairman Brendan Carr
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr
“He has . . . abandoned the FCC’s posture as an independent regulator in favor of an openly personal embrace of Trump.”
Four months into his tenure as head of America’s top communications regulator, Brendan Carr appears to be running a Trumpian playbook to transform a long-independent agency.
Immediately after being promoted by President Donald Trump to chair the Federal Communications Commission, on Jan. 20, Carr launched investigations into top media companies, including NPR, PBS and Comcast.
Related
Latest update of Zick’s Executive Orders repository
SCOTUS denies review in middle school ‘two genders’ shirt case
This past Monday the Supreme Court denied review (7-2) in L.M. v. Town of Middleborough. The issue raised in that case was whether school officials may presume substantial disruption or a violation of the rights of others from a student’s silent, passive, and untargeted ideological speech simply because that speech relates to matters of personal identity, even when the speech responds to the school’s opposing views, actions, or policies.
Summary of facts: “In this case, L.M.’s [middle] school prohibited him from wearing a non-obscene, non-vulgar shirt stating, ‘There Are Only Two Genders,’ because the message ‘would cause students in the LGBTQ+ community to feel unsafe.’. The school even banned him from wearing the same shirt on which he covered the words ‘Only Two’ with a piece of tape on which he wrote “CENSORED” so that the message read, ‘There Are [CENSORED] Genders.’”
The petition had been distributed for conference twelve times.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a dissent. Justice Samuel Alito also wrote a separate dissent, which in part read:
This case presents an issue of great importance for our Nation’s youth: whether public schools may suppress student speech either because it expresses a viewpoint that the school disfavors or because of vague concerns about the likely effect of the speech on the school atmosphere or on students who find the speech offensive. In this case, a middle school permitted and indeed encouraged student expression endorsing the view that there are many genders. But when L. M., a seventh grader, wore a t-shirt that said “There Are Only Two Genders,” he was barred from attending class. And when he protested this censorship by blocking out the words “Only Two” and substituting “CENSORED,” the school prohibited that shirt as well.
The First Circuit held that the school did not violate L. M.’s free-speech rights. It held that the general prohibition against viewpoint-based censorship does not apply to public schools. And it employed a vague, permissive, and jargon-laden rule that departed from the standard this Court adopted in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School Dist., 393 U. S. 503 (1969).
FBI reopens probe into Dobbs Supreme Court leak
The FBI will launch new probes into the 2023 discovery of cocaine at the White House during President Joe Biden’s term and the 2022 leak of the Supreme Court’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, a top official announced on Monday. Dan Bongino, a rightwing podcaster-turned-FBI deputy director, made the announcement on X, saying that he had requested weekly briefings on the cases’ progress. . . .
‘So to Speak’ podcast: Heather Mac Donald on Trump & free speech
“[M]y reaction to everything that Trump is doing, and I agree almost across the board with his substantive aims whether it’s with regards to the universities, whether it’s regards to immigration, is what would we feel if the democratic administrations were doing this exact same thing in favor of their values? Everything we’re doing sets a precedent. Again, I acknowledge the precedent has already been set. . . . I’m still very nervous about the government using power because even though I’m not deeply libertarian, I do think that the hope of a neutral arbiter of a government that is restrained by rules that are content-free that are politics-free is one of the biggest yearnings of humanity, at least in the west.” — Heather Mac Donald
Heather Mac Donald discusses the Trump administration’s free speech record amidst its battles with higher ed, mainstream media, law firms, and more.
Mac Donald is a Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Her most recent book is “When race trumps merit: How the pursuit of equity sacrifices excellence, destroys beauty, and threatens lives.”
Related
Heather Mac Donald, “The White House’s Clumsy Attack on Harvard,” City Journal (April 15) (“The administration is growing ever bolder in its crusade against the institutions responsible for left-wing ideology — whether elite law firms or universities. That crusade is unquestionably justified. Its targets deserve little sympathy. . .”)
2024-2025 SCOTUS term: Free expression and related cases
Cases decided
Villarreal v. Alaniz(Petition granted. Judgment vacated and case remanded for further consideration in light of Gonzalez v. Trevino, 602 U. S. ___ (2024) (per curiam))
Murphy v. Schmitt (“The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted. The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit for further consideration in light of Gonzalez v. Trevino, 602 U. S. ___ (2024) (per curiam).”)
TikTok Inc. and ByteDance Ltd v. Garland (9-0: The challenged provisions of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act do not violate petitioners’ First Amendment rights.)
Review granted
Pending petitions
Petitions denied
Emergency Applications
Yost v. Ohio Attorney General (Kavanaugh, J., “IT IS ORDERED that the March 14, 2025 order of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, case No. 2:24-cv-1401, is hereby stayed pending further order of the undersigned or of the Court. It is further ordered that a response to the application be filed on or before Wednesday, April 16, 2025, by 5 p.m. (EDT).”)
Free speech related
Mahmoud v. Taylor (argued April 22 / free exercise case: issue: Whether public schools burden parents’ religious exercise when they compel elementary school children to participate in instruction on gender and sexuality against their parents’ religious convictions and without notice or opportunity to opt out.)
Thompson v. United States (decided: 3-21-25/ 9-0 w special concurrences by Alito and Jackson) (interpretation of 18 U. S. C. §1014 re “false statements”)
Beginning next week, First Amendment News (FAN) will be moving to Substack. Be sure to sign up and follow us there for future installments!
This article is part of First Amendment News, an editorially independent publication edited by Ronald K. L. Collins and hosted by FIRE as part of our mission to educate the public about First Amendment issues. The opinions expressed are those of the article’s author(s) and may not reflect the opinions of FIRE.
At a recent roundtable discussion of university leaders convened by HEPI with Elsevier, the focus was the concept of the Fourth Generation University. If first-generation universities focused on teaching, second-generation universities on research, third-generation universities on knowledge exchange, then fourth-generation universities combine all those things for the express purpose of addressing real-world challenges. Rather than universities beavering away and occasionally ‘throwing something out there,’ commented one roundtable guest, the idea is to link university delivery to specific goals in partnerships with other agencies.
‘It is tempting in a time of financial crisis in the UK university sector to withdraw into core activities’ continued the discussion contributor, ‘when in fact the opposite is needed – bold steps into more explicit civic engagement.’ One former head of a medical school said that he had never been asked what society needed of his institution. Fourth Generation Universities, conversely, link their work to health priorities and any number of other pressing public concerns. They respond head-on to the UK Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Philipson’s Five Priorities for Universities outlined in her letter to vice-chancellors in autumn 2024, especially number two about economic growth and number three about civic roles. In addition, the Government has stated that it will be publishing a document this summer setting out some plans for higher education reform.
Elsevier is at the heart of developments, establishing a Fourth Generation University global community and a basket of metrics to analyse progress. Eindhoven University of Technology is a trailblazer in the field, and early adopters in the UK include the Universities of Newcastle, Swansea, Aston and Strathclyde, among others. Robert Jan-Smits, recently retired president of the executive board of Eindhoven University of Technology (TUE), and also former Director General of Research and Innovation at the European Commission, offers his reflections on the initiative which, he states, might not suit every institution.
One HEPI and Elsevier roundtable participant who has analysed and encouraged university civic engagement across the UK explained that the three components for success were strong leadership, strong relationships and a strong sense of intentionality. He cautioned that the country is divided in terms of public engagement: swaths of the country never or seldom set foot on a university campus, nor have knowledge of higher education’s work and impact. A chorus of university leaders at the discussion acknowledged their need to do more in terms of better serving and communicating with such groups. University-speak and the dreaded sector acronyms should be banned!
There are plenty of success stories of universities acting as anchor institutions in their regions. Many boast start-up business support, science and innovation parks and strategic collaboration with regional authorities. Others address skills shortages, health inequalities, local transport deficits and low university participation rates. They are all important employers and many serve local, national and global communities simultaneously. Cybersecurity and defence projects which bring together industry and academia, often from multiple institutions, are in ever-increasing demand. One discussion participant reminded the group that some higher education institutions, such as Coventry University, had been set up with civic goals in mind, while another said that resource and planning were needed to develop the right ecosystems and infrastructure in which Fourth Generation Universities can thrive.
While there could be pockets of resistance, most academics can be persuaded that if their students’ job prospects are improved and their own research sharpened, the aims of Fourth Generation Universities are worthwhile. Fully integrating the student voice was key, with a special mention for Arts and Humanities graduates whose storytelling capabilities should be deployed to showcase the positive impact of Fourth Generation initiatives.
One roundtable contributor advised that the UK should take note of what is happening in American universities in terms of heated anti-intellectual rhetoric and huge funding cuts since the start of Donald Trump’s second administration. People need to see the ‘tangible impact’ of universities and understand the connections between their lives and the Academy as a bulwark against aggression.
Attention around the table turned to the recent UK local elections in which a relative political newcomer, Reform, made huge strides. Those universities working in partnership with councils now controlled by Reform reported positive early engagement and an understanding among new councillors of the importance of the success of their local universities. Meanwhile, when it comes to national politics, higher education policy is not seen as a vote-winner.
Perhaps if universities could make their impact on the economy better known, the sector could garner more strategic attention from the government, not least to support the growth agenda. One guest suggested posing a counterfactual: ‘What if there were no, or far fewer, universities? What would the impact be on the economy?’ Another speaker referenced the trend in Australia of universities reporting outcomes like how much growth and employment they had delivered. UK funding systems such as Higher Education Innovation Funding (HEIF) and the Research Excellence Framework (REF) could be developed to better incentivise Fourth-Generation initiatives. The gathered group also remembered that developing more rigorous and consistent methods to measure both the private and public benefits of universities, including social and civic outcomes, was a key priority in Universities UK 2024Opportunity, Growth and Partnership: a blueprint for change. The metric frameworks being developed by the Fourth Generation University global community could provide a basis on which to start.
From publican to professor, fishmonger to founder, cabbie to the cabinet, Fourth Generation Universities need to make sense, deliver outcomes and foster a sense of shared endeavour in a turbulent world.
I drew much inspiration from this morning’s listen to Derrick Bruff’s interview with Jane Southworth about AI across the curriculum. Derrick Bruff’s podcast, Intentional Teaching, gives us bountiful opportunities to learn from the experiences of educators who are transforming educational experiences for students across a wide variety of disciplines and contexts. While the episode did focus on what is obvious from the title, AI Across the Curriculum, I drew a lot of inspiration well beyond just that topic of AI. There are many layers of what they talked about that go well beyond the broad topic of artificial intelligence. Other aspects of leading and teaching within a university context are shared well beyond the particular initiative they discuss.
Jane talks about the difficulty of making such a massive change across a complex institution. She made a few jokes about the difficulties, although she said it was such lightheartedness that I felt such kindness toward her in what must have been such challenging endeavors. Consider what it takes to make something like this happen, and all the committee work that it takes, all the different people that are need to be talked to, all the perspectives to consider. The intricacies, not just to make something work, but to make the fruit of that work visible to students such that they enroll in the program and pursue the educational aims beyond the requirements for their majors. Jane shares examples of them starting an AI certificate program within their curriculum. The mammoth effort that it was to make that technically possible from an operations standpoint, such that someone could take the right classes and that they would go through all the curriculum committees and get that to work within their policies and procedures is one thing. But another layer I found quite fascinating was how do you then make that visible to students such that they’re even aware that this certificate exists and that they find it of interest and worthwhile to pursue further learning.
As Sam Cooke sang years ago, I also “don’t know much about geography.” There’s no doubt in my mind that I have subscribed to some of the myths that Jane described about her discipline of geography. Jane described how in the United Kingdom, when she was in college, that it was the third or fourth most popular degree. Geography graduates found themselves receiving among the highest earnings as they left school, as well as being surprised when they discovered just how much more the field is than studying rocks, like they had initially believed.
