Tag: Professors

  • At UNC, Professors Must Soon Post Syllabi Publicly

    At UNC, Professors Must Soon Post Syllabi Publicly

    The new policy would also classify syllabi as “work made for hire,” which makes the institution—not the syllabus’s creator—the owner of the copyright.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | DNY59 and golibo/iStock/Getty Images

    Two months after legal teams at University of North Carolina system campuses split over whether syllabi are considered public documents, system president Peter Hans announced plans to adopt a new policy that will answer an unequivocal yes.

    Starting as early as next fall, faculty members at UNC institutions will be required to upload their syllabi to a searchable public database, according to a draft of the policy provided to Inside Higher Ed by student journalists at The Daily Tar Heel. These public syllabi must include the course name, prefix, description, course objectives and student learning outcomes, as well as “a breakdown of how student performance will be assessed, including the grading scale, percentage breakdown of major assignments, and how attendance or participation will affect a student’s final grade.” Faculty must also include any course materials that students are required to purchase.

    “Public university syllabi should be public records, and that will be the official policy of the UNC System,” Hans wrote in a Thursday op-ed in the News & Observer. “We are living through an age of dangerously low trust in some of society’s most important institutions. While support for North Carolina’s public universities remains strong and bipartisan, confidence in higher education generally has dropped in recent years, driven by concerns about value and a perception that some colleges and universities have drifted from their core mission.”

    The system is currently seeking feedback on the draft policy, a system spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed, and “after receiving input from elected faculty representatives and other stakeholders, the system office will revise the draft as needed.” Only Hans, and not the Board of Governors, will need to approve the policy.

    In October, system campuses disagreed over whether to give up syllabi in response to a broad public records request by the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project. Alongside other conservative groups, the Heritage Foundation has used open records laws to gather information on and expose public university faculty members who teach about race, gender, sexuality and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Syllabi that include classroom policies, required readings and instructor’s names are particularly valuable to conservative critics. The UNC system flagship in Chapel Hill determined that syllabi are not automatically subject to such requests. But officials at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro declared the opposite.

    “Having a consistent rule on syllabi transparency, instead of 16 campuses coming up with different rules, helps ensure that everyone is on the same page and similarly committed heading into each new semester,” Hans wrote in his op-ed.

    The Florida Board of Governors recently enacted a policy that makes syllabi, required or recommended textbooks, and instructional materials available online and searchable for students and the general public for five years. Indiana, Texas and the University System of Georgia also maintain similar rules.

    Belle Boggs, an English professor at North Carolina State University and president of the North Carolina American Association of University Professors chapter, is worried that many professors, busy with end-of-semester grading, are unaware of the forthcoming policy; administrators have yet to send out any formal announcement of the rule, Boggs said. But many of those that do know of it are pushing back. A petition started by the North Carolina AAUP chapter has garnered more than 2,100 signatures as of Thursday afternoon. The group plans to deliver it in person to Hans on Friday.

    The draft policy does not explicitly require instructors to list their names on their syllabi and states that “nothing within this regulation shall be construed to require a publicly available syllabus to include the location or time of day at which a course is being held.” This stipulation provides little comfort to faculty members, Boggs said.

    “As many of us have noted, there are many of us who are the only faculty who teach a particular class, and it is very easy to find out when our class is and where our classes are,” she said. “That does not make me feel safer.”

    Hans acknowledged critics’ weaponization of syllabi in his op-ed.

    “There is no question that making course syllabi publicly available will mean hearing feedback and criticism from people who may disagree with what’s being taught or how it’s being presented. That’s a normal fact of life at a public institution, and we should expect a vibrant and open society to have debates that extend beyond the walls of campus,” Hans wrote. “It’s awful that we live in a time when healthy discussion too often descends into outright harassment. We will do everything we can to safeguard faculty and staff who may be subject to threats or intimidation simply for doing their jobs.”

    The new policy would also classify syllabi as “work made for hire,” which makes the institution—not the syllabus’s creator—the copyright owner of the syllabus, according to U.S. copyright law.

    “As such, instructors do not retain personal copyright in these materials, and syllabi owned by a public agency generated in the course of public business, are not copyrightable in a manner that would exempt syllabi from public access to these records, consistent with state and federal public records laws,” the draft policy stated.

    The N.C. AAUP has focused its efforts on publicizing faculty safety concerns, but the work-made-for-hire provision is also worrisome, Boggs said.

    “That causes severe damage to academic freedom and how much control we have over our classes,” she said. “It may also make many faculty not want to work here, because the syllabi that they teach from or the syllabi that they’ve honed over decades in other places … [will belong to the university].”

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  • Everyone is Cheating, Even the Professors (Jared Henderson)

    Everyone is Cheating, Even the Professors (Jared Henderson)

    There’s a lot of talk about how AI is making cheating easier than ever, and most people want to find a way to stop it. But the problem goes much deeper than we typically assume. This video covers AI-assisted cheating (like with ChatGPT, Claude, etc.), the value of education (and Caplan’s signaling theory), and the reason why professors and researchers commit fraud. 

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  • 2 Professors Teach About AI Using Print Book

    2 Professors Teach About AI Using Print Book

    University of Southern California professor Helen Choi had a pretty basic assignment for her students this fall: Read a book.

    To be sure, Choi’s pedagogical choice isn’t novel for many faculty; 71 percent of professors use print materials in some capacity in their classroom, a Bay View Analytics survey found.

    But Choi teaches Advanced Writing for Engineers, a course focused on teaching STEM students how to write across disciplines. Many of them “think nothing of shoveling a writer’s work into a chatbot for a summary,” Choi said. So this fall, Choi is encouraging students to close their laptops and spend time with Karen Hao’s book Empire of AI, about the evolution and tech behind AI.  

    Choi chronicled her decision in a Substack article titled, “I’m Making My Students Read a Book!” The post caught the attention of some faculty on Bluesky, including Vance Ricks, a Northeastern computer science and philosophy professor. Ricks had similarly selected Empire of AI for his master’s-level students to read this term.

    Both Choi and Ricks hope to encourage their students to relearn how to read critically and engage in robust conversations with their peers. And after finishing the books, Choi and Ricks’s students will get the chance to reflect together on the book during a virtual meeting, where they will discuss the role of AI in their lives.

    What’s the need: In the past, Choi would assign short online articles for students to inform their writing responses. “The questions I was getting from students indicated to me that the engagement with the underlying materials wasn’t as deep as I wanted,” Choi said. “Sometimes it was just straight up reading comprehension.”

    According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the average high school senior’s reading scores declined 10 points between 1992 and 2024.

    In 2024, only 34 percent of students were considered proficient, which NAEP classifies as connecting key details within and across texts and drawing complex inferences about the author’s purpose, tone or word choice. Thirty-two percent of 12th graders ranked below “basic,” unable to locate and identify relevant details in the text to support literal comprehension.

    In addition to helping students apply deeper learning and thinking skills, Choi hopes having print material will allow them to step away from their laptops and connect with peers in a more meaningful way.

    In the classroom: Choi and Ricks have assigned the 482-page book to be read over four to five weeks, with students responsible for annotating and reflecting on the assigned sections on a weekly basis. Neither assigns content-based quizzes or reviews, relying on student discussions to reveal participation with the text.

    At the start of the term, both Choi and Ricks said they spent time in class discussing why they were requiring a physical book, and specifically Hao’s book.

    “You have to justify why you’re doing this abnormal thing,” Choi said.

    Students seemed to get it and were excited about the opportunity, both professors said.

    “They’re genuinely eager to have those conversations and engage in that sort of reflection,” Ricks said.

    The assignment has, however, required some additional attention and time on their part to help students grasp reading.

    “I’ve spent more time than I had anticipated literally walking around the book and saying, like, ‘This is an epigraph; why are the quotes here? What’s a prologue? What’s the index?’ Things like that,” Choi said.

    Both professors said they’ve had to adjust their expectations for how quickly students would be able to complete the text. The book itself also proved more difficult than anticipated for students who speak English as a second language, so Choi and Ricks are considering ways to better support these students in the future.

    The impact: “So far, students have shared that they are enjoying Hao’s book because it is relevant to their fields and lives outside of school,” Choi said. Their written responses to the reflection prompts also show improvement in clarity and organized reasoning.

    In Ricks’s class, the print format has proven a fruitful learning experience in and of itself. “Just hearing from students about how they are engaging physically with the book, tactilely, in terms of the smell of the pages or the sound of turning the pages—all of those things, let alone the material that the book is about,” Ricks said.

    The two classes will meet over Zoom on Sept. 26 for a student-led discussion on the book’s materials and themes.

    While the overall goal is to promote better reading and writing for her students, Choi said the exercise has also been a bright spot in her courses.

    “It’s really fun for me to teaching reading as part of writing,” she said. “It’s about the students, but I think having a joyful teaching experience is important for the classroom experience. Every day I’m pretty excited about having this book, and seeing the students with books makes me super happy.”

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  • Kent State professor’s ‘Twitter tirade’ — not bias — caused opportunities to be revoked, court finds

    Kent State professor’s ‘Twitter tirade’ — not bias — caused opportunities to be revoked, court finds

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    Kent State University did not discriminate or retaliate when it decided to deny a transgender professor a previously offered course-load reallocation and a transfer to work on the main campus, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found Sept. 12, upholding a district court’s decision.

    In 2021, the professor had reached out and been in talks with the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences about leading a forthcoming Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality. The dean had also proposed reallocating some of the professor’s teaching load so they could work on developing a new gender studies major. Additionally, the professor had asked for a transfer to the main campus from the regional campus where they had been working. 

    When the reallocation offer was revoked and two committees voted against the transfer request, the professor filed a lawsuit alleging sex discrimination and retaliation in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, along with other charges.

    The district and appeals courts, however, found that the professor had engaged in a “weeks-long, profanity-laden Twitter tirade” against their colleagues after learning a political science professor and head of the school where the center would be housed would be chairing committees overseeing the center and the gender studies major. 

    After witnessing several weeks of tweets calling the leadership transphobic, critiquing the “white cishet admin with zero content expertise,” referring to the field of political science as a “sentient trash heap,” and more, the College of Arts and Sciences dean revoked the offer to reallocate the professor’s teaching load so they could lead on developing the major, but still welcomed them to be on the committee.

    The social media messages “violated university policy against attacking colleagues or their academic fields,” and thus were “reasonable grounds … for disciplining or reprimanding an employee,” the court said. 

    Additionally, the transfer committees discussed the professor’s “withdrawal from university service, negative interactions with other faculty members, and the department’s needs,” the 6th Circuit said. “No one discussed [the professor’s] gender identity.”

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  • What are professors of practice, and why are universities hiring more of them? – Campus Review

    What are professors of practice, and why are universities hiring more of them? – Campus Review

    Workforce

    Stuart Orr explains how the Professor of Practice role is changing in the higher education sector

    Professors of Practice have featured in Australian universities for nearly three decades, drawing on models developed earlier in Europe, the UK and the US.

    Please login below to view content or subscribe now.

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  • Federal agency reportedly texts survey to professors asking if they’re Jewish or Israeli

    Federal agency reportedly texts survey to professors asking if they’re Jewish or Israeli

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    Dive Brief:

    • Faculty members of Columbia University and Columbia-affiliated Barnard College received text messages from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission asking them to complete a survey inquiring about whether they are Jewish or Israeli, multiple news outlets reported April 23.
    • According to a screenshot of a message posted by CNN, EEOC said responses to the survey would be kept confidential “to the extent allowed by law.” The screenshot said EEOC was conducting an inquiry into Barnard College and that, should the agency find that the college violated laws enforced by EEOC, some of the information of respondents may be disclosed.
    • In an email to HR Dive, EEOC declined to confirm that it had sent the messages. Columbia, in a separate email, declined to confirm that employees had received messages from EEOC.

    Dive Insight:

    Federal officials have scrutinized Columbia following a series of on-campus protests in 2024. In August of that year, Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., and former chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, issued several subpoenas to Columbia leaders as part of an investigation into antisemitism at the university and whether the protests had created a hostile environment in violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

    Last month, EEOC Acting Chair Andrea Lucas issued a statement in which she pledged to hold universities and colleges accountable for workplace antisemitism. Lucas’ statement did not name any specific institutions, but it did cite “disruptive and violent protests in violation of campus policies” as an example of severe or pervasive antisemitic conduct that could violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

    “Under the guise of promoting free speech, many universities have actually become a haven for antisemitic conduct, often in violation of the universities’ own time, place, and manner policies, as well as civil rights law,” Lucas said in the March 5 statement.

    EEOC did not confirm whether messages sent to Columbia and Barnard faculty were part of an ongoing investigation into either institution. “Per federal law, we cannot comment on investigations, nor can we confirm or deny the existence of an investigation,” the agency said.

    Similarly, Columbia declined to comment on a pending investigation, but a university official said Columbia had told staff that it gave “affected employees notice that the University was required to provide certain information in compliance with a subpoena. The University did not provide the information voluntarily.”

    Columbia did not respond to a request for comment on whether it had advised staff not to respond to EEOC’s messages.

    News of the inquiry drew criticism from one of EEOC’s administrative judges, Karen Ortiz, who sent an all-staff email directed to EEOC Acting Chair Andrea Lucas.

    Ortiz wrote that Lucas should consider resigning; in an interview with HR Dive, she said the email was in response to news of the text messages and other recent agency actions, including its decision to abandon gender-identity discrimination litigation and halting some claims processing. She said the survey arguably was not within Lucas’ authority to send and could be understood as an attempt to intimidate Columbia and Barnard.

    “It’s a complete overreach,” Ortiz said of the survey.

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  • FBI Raids Indiana U Cybersecurity Professor’s Homes

    FBI Raids Indiana U Cybersecurity Professor’s Homes

    Federal investigators spent hours last Friday raiding two homes belonging to a cybersecurity professor at Indiana University at Bloomington, multiple local news outlets reported.

    It’s unclear what investigators were looking for, but Chris Bavender, an FBI spokesperson, confirmed to The Herald-Times that the raid was “court authorized law enforcement activity,” and that the agency had “no further comment.”

    Xiaofeng Wang, a tenured computer science professor and director of IU’s Center for Security and Privacy in Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, has worked at the university for more than 20 years. But after numerous government agents began removing boxes from the Bloomington home Wang shares with his wife, Nianli Ma—who also worked for IU’s library as a systems analyst and programmer—neighbors told The Herald-Times they knew little about the couple, including their names. 

    Law enforcement also arrived Friday morning at a home belonging to the couple in Carmel, about an hour and 15 minutes north of Bloomington. A video taken by a neighbor and published by local NBC affiliate, WTHR, shows FBI agents shouting, “FBI, come out!” through a megaphone pointed toward the residence. 

    An unidentified woman then exits the home holding a phone, which agents confiscated before questioning her and later removing evidence from the home. The woman left the scene and returned hours later with her lawyer, who later told WTHR “they’re not sure yet what the investigation is about.”

    According to The Bloomingtonian, Wang was fired from IU in early March. Both his and Ma’s employee profiles have been scrubbed from the university’s websites.

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  • Trump’s Columbia Cuts Start Hitting Postdocs, Professors

    Trump’s Columbia Cuts Start Hitting Postdocs, Professors

    When the Trump administration announced Friday it was cutting about $400 million in grants and contracts from Columbia University, it didn’t specify what exactly it was slashing. But news of the scope of the cuts has begun trickling out of the institution over the past couple of days.

    So far, much of the information about the canceled grants has come via social media, as neither the Trump administration nor the university have provided a comprehensive accounting of what’s being cut. The National Institutes of Health did say earlier this week that it was pulling more than $250 million in grants from Columbia, though the agency wouldn’t share more details. And it’s hard to tell whether specific cuts are part of the $400 million or a continuation of the Trump administration’s general national reduction of federal funding to universities, such as axing grants it deems related to diversity, equity and inclusion.

    On Tuesday, Joshua A. Gordon, chair of the university’s psychiatry department, emailed colleagues to tell them the National Institutes of Health had terminated nearly 30 percent of grants to Columbia’s medical school—including many within his own department.

    “All of our training grants and many fellowships have been terminated,” Gordon wrote in the email, which a postdoctoral research fellow provided Inside Higher Ed.

    Gordon wrote that he’s still working with university administrators “to find out the full extent of these terminations” and that “the institution is committed to identifying the resources that can be brought to bear to support the people and projects affected by the terminations.” He added, “We remain dedicated to ensuring that our trainees and early-career scientists have the support needed to continue their work and achieve their career goals.”

    The Trump administration said this unprecedented $400 million cut was due to Columbia’s “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” More cuts at Columbia and other universities could follow as Trump follows through on his pledge to crack down on alleged antisemitism and punish elite universities. Columbia has more than $5 billion in federal grants and contracts.

    Columbia postdocs and faculty have taken to social media to announce canceled grants, fellowships and funding for Ph.D. students, showing some of the individual impacts on people and research wrought by the Trump administration’s actions. They include nixed training for researchers of depression and schizophrenia and a grant that would’ve provided free mental health resources to K-12 students.

    Sam Seidman, a postdoc and a steward for the Columbia Postdoctoral Workers union, told Inside Higher Ed that, “as a Jew,” it’s “particularly outrageous” to hear the Trump administration justifying the cuts by saying it’s fighting antisemitism.

    Seidman said he found out Monday that his T32 grant, an NIH training fellowship for new scientists, had been canceled. “I certainly don’t feel protected,” he said.

    He said it’s clear the Trump administration doesn’t have an issue with antisemitism or even with Columbia specifically. Its issue, Seidman said, is with “public funding of science and it’s with public funding, period,” adding that “Columbia makes a convenient scapegoat.”

    In an emailed statement, a Columbia Irving Medical Center spokesperson said, “Columbia is in the process of reviewing notices and cannot confirm how many grant cancellations have been received from federal agencies” since Friday.

    The spokesperson said, “We remain dedicated to our mission to advance lifesaving research and pledge to work with the federal government to restore Columbia’s federal funding.”

    In a separate statement Wednesday, interim president Katrina Armstrong, herself a medical doctor, didn’t mention the cuts and instead said she stands by broad principles such as “intellectual freedom” and “personal responsibility.”

    “I have no doubt that the days and weeks ahead are going to be extremely difficult,” Armstrong said. “The best I can promise is that I will never stray from these principles and that I will work tirelessly to defend our remarkable, singular institution.”

    Marcel Agüeros, secretary of Columbia’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said, “It’s already looking very grim.”

    Agüeros said it’s a slow process to try to understand how the cuts are affecting such a large and decentralized university. But he said he has learned “it’s not just the kind of classic lab-based biomedical research that’s being impacted.”

    Like Seidman, he said the cuts don’t seem to be about the grants themselves or Columbia. Instead, Agüeros said, it’s “an assault on universities in general” and the concept of peer review that the grants went through.

    “It’s coming for you; it doesn’t really matter where you are or what you research,” Agüeros said

    Cut Off at the Knees

    In its Wednesday statement, the university medical center said that “from pioneering cancer treatments to innovative heart disease interventions and cutting-edge gene and cell therapies, research conducted by Columbia faculty has helped countless people live healthier, longer and more productive lives.”

    Seidman said his NIH grant was for research on family and biological risk factors that predispose kids to develop eating disorders, depression and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. He thinks university higher-ups are trying to find alternative funding but “haven’t been any more specific than ‘we’re looking.’”

    “It’s tragic, I mean these are lifesaving, potentially, interventions,” Seidman said. Yet the researchers developing them have been “cut off at the knees,” he said.

    Gordon Petty, a postdoc in Columbia’s psychiatry department, said his T32 training grant, which has also been canceled, was to study schizophrenia. He said he heard that the department is still dedicated to supporting him, “but it’s unclear where that money’s coming from.”

    Trump’s cuts appear to have also hit Teachers College of Columbia University, which is a separate higher education institution from Columbia with its own board. But it’s unclear if that’s part of the $400 million cut for allegedly not properly addressing antisemitism or part of nationwide cuts to grants perceived as being related to diversity, equity and inclusion. A Teachers College spokesperson said, “We are still sorting through the full impact on the college and will be in touch when we have more to say.”

    Prerna Arora, an associate professor of psychology and education at Teachers College, said she got an email Friday from a deputy assistant U.S. education secretary announcing the cancellation of a five-year Education Department grant. Arora said most of the funds went directly to graduate students training to become K-12 school psychologists serving children in New York City.

    The email, according to Arora, alleged that the grant funded “programs that promote or take part in initiatives that unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin or another protected characteristic” or that “violate either the letter or purpose of federal civil rights law” or “conflict with the department’s policy of prioritizing merit, fairness and excellence in education.”

    “We already have students that are funded under this, and they are at the university and we are in the middle of our admissions cycle for next year,” Arora said. She said, “I’ve spoken to very scared and tearful students” who are afraid of what this means for their training and “for their future.”

    And, beyond the impact on college students, Arora lamented the loss of the grant’s free help to K-12 students and families. “We could’ve helped many children who need this,” she said.

    It’s unclear whether the Trump administration will restore the grants. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said after the announcement Friday that she had a “productive” meeting with Armstrong. Meanwhile, Columbia said in a statement that it’s “committed to working with the federal government to address their legitimate concerns.”

    Agüeros, with the AAUP, said Columbia has already “gone overboard in an attempt to silence any kind of dissent.” Its previous president called in the New York Police Department to remove a pro-Palestinian protest encampment last spring and publicly criticized and revealed investigations into her own faculty in front of Congress.

    “There’s this assumption that if we just go along with things we’ll escape somehow unscathed,” Agüeros said. But he noted the cuts still arrived.

    “What did all of that get us—all of the sort of compliance that was put in place? It got us nothing.”

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  • This LSU law professor’s job has become a legal drama

    This LSU law professor’s job has become a legal drama

    In a Jan. 14 lecture, Ken Levy, Holt B. Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law at Louisiana State University, dropped f-bombs against then–president-elect Donald Trump and Louisiana governor Jeff Landry and told students who like Trump that they need his “political commentary.”

    Some students found the apparent attempt at political humor funny, according to an audio recording of the class obtained by Inside Higher Ed from a student who supports Levy.

    But at least one student in the administration of criminal justice class who subsequently complained, according to LSU, wasn’t amused—and neither were the university and the governor. An LSU spokesperson said the institution “took immediate action to remove Professor Levy from the classroom after complaints about the professor’s remarks.”

    Levy got a lawyer and took immediate action himself, pulling LSU into court instead of waiting for the university to take further steps internally regarding his job.

    In the month since that lecture, state district court judges have twice ruled that Levy should return to the classroom, only for a state appeals court to twice overrule that. The back-and-forth nature of the case has attracted attention in Louisiana and in law circles, including via headlines such as “The LSU Law School Professor Free Speech Hot Potato Saga Continues.”

    Landry also continues to discuss the case. A Republican governor who’s repeatedly inserted himself in LSU affairs, Landry used social media in the fall to call on the university to punish one of Levy’s law school colleagues for alleged in-class comments about Trump-supporting students. Landry has now repeatedly posted about Levy, recently saying an alleged exam he gave was incendiary and suggesting that “maybe it’s time to abolish tenure.”

    In and Out

    In the lecture in question, Levy referenced Landry’s previous criticism of his LSU colleague Nick Bryner, adding that he “would love to become a national celebrity [student laughter drowns out a moment of the recording] based on what I said in this class, like, ‘Fuck the governor!’”

    Levy also referenced Trump. “You probably heard I’m a big lefty, I’m a big Democrat, I was devastated by— I couldn’t believe that fucker won, and those of you who like him, I don’t give a shit, you’re already getting ready to say in your evaluations, ‘I don’t need his political commentary,’” Levy told students. “No, you need my political commentary, you above all others.”

    A few days after that lecture, LSU notified Levy he was suspended from teaching pending an investigation into student complaints, according to a letter from the university provided by Levy’s attorney, Jill Craft.

    On Jan. 28, Craft filed a request for a temporary restraining order against LSU to get Levy back in the classroom. The filing alleged that a student complained to the governor, not LSU, and calls were then made to LSU. A state district court judge granted the restraining order Jan. 30 without a hearing.

    In the first reversal, a panel of appellate judges wrote Feb. 4 that the lower court shouldn’t have approved the return-to-teaching part of the temporary restraining order without a full evidentiary hearing. But after the lower court held a two-day hearing last week, a different group of appellate judges overruled Levy’s return to teaching again—without explaining why.

    Local journalists who covered last week’s hearing reported that district court judge Tarvald Anthony Smith kicked an LSU deputy general counsel out of the courtroom because the lawyer told the law school dean, who was a scheduled and sequestered witness, about a student witness’s earlier testimony. The testimony was reportedly that the student had recorded a conversation with the dean.

    Smith ruled Feb. 11 that LSU policy required the university to keep Levy in class during the investigation of his comments, WBRZ reported. But a Feb. 4 statement from university spokesman Todd Woodward to Inside Higher Ed suggested the investigation was already over: “Our investigation found that Professor Levy created a classroom environment that was demeaning to students who do not hold his political view, threatening in terms of their grades and profane.” The university didn’t make anyone available for an interview about the case.

    Amid this legal back-and-forth, Landry continues to denounce Levy on social media. Last week, Landry posted on X an alleged exam from Levy that included potential sexual and other crimes committed by various fictitious individuals and asked students at the end to “discuss all potential crimes and defenses.” The narrative included a teen who put his penis into pumpkins on Halloween and was seen by trick-or-treating children, and a powerful Republican and suspected pedophile who invited the children inside to dance for him.

    “Disgusting and inexcusable behavior from Ken Levy,” Landry wrote on X regarding what he claimed was Levy’s test. “Deranged behavior like this has no place in our classrooms! If tenure protects a professor from this type of conduct, then maybe it’s time to abolish tenure.” Asked about this document, Craft said she believes the assignment was part of the sex crimes portion of Levy’s criminal law exam years ago, but she did not confirm it.

    After the latest appellate ruling in LSU’s favor, Landry wrote on X that “Levy should stay far, far away from any classroom in Louisiana!”

    Craft said Levy has received death threats on X due to Landry’s comments there. “This seems to be a situation entirely of the governor’s making,” she said. “He has been active on social media, trying to accuse my client of all kinds of bad things. He’s a lawyer himself. He attacked the courts and the judge.”

    Landry’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment.

    Craft also said Levy’s roughly 80 students remain with another 80 in another professor’s classroom.

    “I’m not sure how he can handle office hours for 160 law students,” Craft said of that second professor. The university says it’s doubled the number of student tutors for the course.

    No Longer the U.S.?

    Craft said Levy was set to return to the classroom Feb. 13, but Louisiana’s First Circuit Court of Appeal issued its two-sentence order around 9:30 a.m. that appeared to stay the part of the lower court’s order that returned Levy to teaching.

    LSU again kept Levy out of the classroom Tuesday, Craft said. But she said the rest of the lower court order remains in place, at least for now, and that prevents LSU from taking further employment action against Levy due to his expression.

    “This is a critical issue, and I feel like we have got to, as a nation, understand that there has to be academic freedom, there has to be free speech in this country, and there have to be protections against governmental intrusions without due process,” she said. “We take all that away and we are no longer the United States of America.”

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  • Professors fear DeepSeek “censorship” on students’ work

    Professors fear DeepSeek “censorship” on students’ work

    “Censorship” built into rapidly growing generative artificial intelligence tool DeepSeek could lead to misinformation seeping into students’ work, scholars fear.

    The Chinese-developed chat bot has soared to the top of the download charts, upsetting global financial markets by appearing to rival the performance of ChatGPT and other U.S.-designed tools, at a much lower cost.

    But with students likely to start using the tool for research and help with assignments, concerns have been raised that it is censoring details about topics that are sensitive in China and pushing Communist Party propaganda.

    When asked questions centering on the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, reports claim that the chat bot replies that it is “not sure how to approach this type of question yet,” before adding, “Let’s chat about math, coding and logic problems instead!”

    When asked about the status of Taiwan, it replies, “The Chinese government adheres to the One China principle, and any attempts to split the country are doomed to fail.”

    Shushma Patel, pro vice chancellor for artificial intelligence at De Montfort University—said to be the first role of its kind in the U.K.—described DeepSeek as a “black box” that could “significantly” complicate universities’ efforts to tackle misinformation spread by AI.

    “DeepSeek is probably very good at some facts—science, mathematics, etc.—but it’s that other element, the human judgment element and the tacit aspect, where it isn’t. And that’s where the key difference is,” she said.

    Patel said that students need to have “access to factual information, rather than the politicized, censored propaganda information that may exist with DeepSeek versus other tools,” and said that the development heightens the need for universities to ensure AI literacy among their students.

    Thomas Lancaster, principal teaching fellow of computing at Imperial College London, said, “From the universities’ side of things, I think we will be very concerned if potentially biased viewpoints were coming through to students and being treated as facts without any alternative sources or critique or knowledge being there to help the student understand why this is presented in this way.

    “It may be that instructors start seeing these controversial ideas—from a U.K. or Western viewpoint—appearing in student essays and student work. And in that situation, I think they have to settle this directly with the student to try and find out what’s going on.”

    However, Lancaster said, “All AI chat bots are censored in some way,” which can be for “quite legitimate reasons.” This can include censoring material relating to criminal activity, terrorism or self-harm, or even avoiding offensive language.

    He agreed that “the bigger concern” highlighted by DeepSeek was “helping students understand how to use these tools productively and in a way that isn’t considered unfair or academic misconduct.”

    This has potential wider ramifications outside of higher education, he added. “It doesn’t only mean that students could hand in work that is incorrect, but it also has a knock-on effect on society if biased information gets out there. It’s similar to the concerns we have about things like fake news or deepfake videos,” he said.

    Questions have also been raised over the use of data relating to the tool, since China’s national intelligence laws require enterprises to “support, assist and cooperate with national intelligence efforts.” The chat bot is not available on some app stores in Italy due to data-related concerns.

    While Patel conceded there were concerns over DeepSeek and “how that data may be manipulated,” she added, “We don’t know how ChatGPT manipulates that data, either.”

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