Writing and AI at Harvard

At The Atlantic (gift link), Tyler Austin Harper writes about “Why the Closing of Harvard’s Writing Center Matters.” He suspects that Harvard’s decision will give other schools permission to close their writing centers:

The decisions that Harvard makes create a permission structure for other institutions to follow suit — after all, if one of the most venerable schools in the country doesn’t need a writing center in order to be “elite,” why would a public university, or a regional liberal-arts college, or a community college need one?

I see it differently: I think that emphasizing the presence of a writing center might offer a lower-tier school a smart and snarky way to present itself to prospective students. On a campus tour, for instance: “This building also houses our writing center. As you may know, Harvard University recently got rid of its writing center. Unlike Harvard, we still have a writing center, because we believe that students benefit from working on their writing with another human being, not with a chatbot.”

As Harper points out, Harvard is all in on AI. A development that just made the news, postdating his essay: Harvard is now selling a course on entrepreneurship “taught” by AI replicas of business faculty (The New York Times , gift link). Only $699!

The prose of Harvard’s unrelated Teach with Generative AI page (AI-generated prose?) does not inspire confidence. For instance:

Harvard has consistently tried to embrace new technology across our classrooms, residential and virtual. GenAI has been no different.

It’d be Harvard that’s been no different, not AI.

Behold, a fused sentence:

Faculty and students have access to a range of tools. Some of these tools are free and open to all faculty, students and staff behind Harvard Key (Harvard Sandbox) other tools require a license or approval.

My favorite:

Out of this there have been several learnings worth considering.

And I’m sure there’ll be many more.