AKA Review - 09.20.2024

From The Atlantic
How Colleges Should Address Anti-Semitism
By Conor Friedersdorf

Looking at reports from task forces on campus anti-Semitism at four elite universities, the author expresses skepticism of the three that propose expanding DEI protections to Jewish students. He argues that only Stanford offers a workable approach, eschewing DEI as “fundamentally flawed” (which the article explores in depth) and instead recommending “confident pluralism.” This approach promotes “a culture of pluralism and tolerance” that helps individuals from all backgrounds and “gives everyone a stake in conserving equal rights.” Read this article

From The Chronicle of Higher Education
Will AI Make College Admissions Better—or Worse
By Scott Carlson

What are the scenarios for a future where AI is embedded in most of higher education’s student-facing functions, from recruitment to career coaching? Most optimistically, AI will free staff of transactional work to do what they do best: intuiting the hidden strengths and commitments of students and helping them create personalized college plans. More bleakly, AI will simply reinforce conventional student thinking about majors and careers. Or, one day, might AI chatbots themselves work with students as resourcefully as humans? Read this article

From Higher Ed Dive
Sticker shock: A look at the complicated world of tuition pricing
By Ben Unglesbee

As both the cost of college attendance and tuition discounts hit record highs, “the practice of marking down tuition sticker prices…comes with few benefits at this point,” many experts argue. This article’s overview of the state of college pricing looks critically at sticker prices, tuition discounting, and tuition “resets,” as well as their drivers. It concludes that such commonly used approaches mislead students, muddy public perceptions of the value of a college education, and, for institutions, wear on revenue and finances. Read this article

From The New Yorker
Are We Living in the Age of Info-Determinism?
By Joshua Rothman

“As the density, pace, and fluidity of information have increased, we’ve become more conscious of the role it plays in our lives—and more suspicious of it.” The author calls this “info-determinism.” Leading to it was the explosive growth of the Internet which spawned a near-infinite number of information sources and split the users into “tribes,” each with its own sources and disdainful of any authoritative expertise. The future is likely to be an AI world where we are flooded by computer-generated fake news and unable to agree on even the most basic facts. Read this article

From WIRED
Signal Is More Than Encrypted Messaging. Under Meredith Whittaker, It’s Out to Prove Surveillance Capitalism Wrong
By Andy Greenberg

Signal, the encrypted communications phenomenon used by hundreds of millions of people, is a nonprofit that doesn’t take investment or advertisements and collects no data on its users—the exact opposite of the Silicon Valley model. In this riveting interview, its president, Meredith Whittaker, makes the case that, while there isn’t a business model for privacy on the internet, Signal is evidence that the “surveillance capitalism” approach of the tech giants is not the only path forward for the future of technology and communication. Read this article