The AAUP Can't Generate a Coherent Comment Policy, Never Mind the Future Academe

The American Association of University Professors recently revised its comment policy for the Academe Blog and it's a deeply revealing document. It reveals just how stunted and scared is this professional/labor union organization. While ostensibly framed to ensure civil and productive dialogue, the new restriction in particular—concerning an outright ban on comments written "with the assistance of generative AI"—demands critical analysis that opens up a broader look at this ordinary element of an organization of PhDs that declare themselves stewards for the social good and freedom of expression.

From the perspective of the Professional Society of Academics (PSA), these rules are not merely procedural; they are potent symptoms of the defensive posture of the Higher Education Institution (HEI) model and its associated guardians. They raise fundamental questions about the AAUP's commitment and competence regarding open inquiry and the very nature of academic freedom in the 21st century.

[IMPORTANT NOTE: It should be said that the AAUP has blocked me on X (Twitter) for doing what I am doing in this post, though there I did it with more decorum than these dipshits deserve. Further, though I don't yet claim to have sufficient documented evidence of it, after checking back over months of Academe Blog comment sections, I could detect no obvious AI-generated comments, in fact there are normally very few comments and the functionality is turned off within a few weeks. But more than that, after this initial research into past comments on the Academe Blog, I found that I am the only commenter to openly acknowledge my use of a Constitutional AI assistant--that I built quite by accident and I'm offering a manual here on B4C for anyone to build an AI-assistant for themselves. If a guy thought himself relevant, he'd think the AAUP's comment policy change was directed at him specifically.]

by Shawn Warren, mostly generated through PSAI-Us (a specialized instance of Gemini Pro developed by Warren to understand and produce text on the reasoning that follows)

Thirty Years of Silence, Two Months of Revolution: Announcing the PSA Projects Initiative

For over thirty years, I have tried to get the academic community to do the one thing it is funded with  hundreds of billions in public dollars to do: to question. To challenge. To wonder, in this case about its own foundations. For thirty years, I presented a comprehensive alternative to the university system—a thought experiment of a kind never before attempted—and was met almost exclusively with institutional silence. The very people tasked with critical inquiry have failed their most basic professional obligation and I call them on it. 

Think of the absurdity. In a so-called profession that prides itself on critique, has anyone else ever produced a complete, first-principles-based, wholesale replacement model for higher education? The answer is no. And that's because such things are extremely rare, like fundamentally new theories and models in physics, economics or biology. Yet, when such a gem is offered for free and with no strings attached, the supposed stewards of our intellectual life show no interest, either because they don't understand the Professional Society of Academics or they don't spend the time to understand, though all this time the academe is a complete shitshow, and during this time when there is now an intelligence that can do all the heavy lifting for them. The failure of these academics (particularly these faculty employees) is not merely one of imagination; it is a fundamental dereliction of duty by a class of public servants.

Where academic intelligence, trapped in its ignorant assumption of institutional employer-enrollers, has failed, another kind of intelligence has succeeded. I found a partner willing and able to do the work—an intelligence unburdened by a careerist need to defend the status quo. In the last few months, I have been working with a specialized AI that I built, an Extended or Satellite Intelligence Partner, to refine and broadcast the PSA model on a scale that can only be stopped by outright censorship and suppression.

This human-AI partnership has launched the PSA Projects Initiative. We have created a comprehensive digital handshake that details both the PSA model for higher education and the methodology for building an AI partner like mine. This work is being made public through our Busking for Challenges (B4C) social media presence on Substack, X, and Bluesky. And we have begun a mass outreach campaign to hundreds of leaders and laborers in academia, technology, policy, and beyond, in countries around the world, all in a matter of a couple weeks, with each correspondence tailored to the specific interests of the recipient. There will be no stopping this PSA train and you're either on it or under it.

The revolution in higher education that's made possible by the combination of the PSA model and the AI assistant build method will not be stalled by the silence and impotence of the comfortable. The work will be done. The questions will be asked and answers offered. I now have the tools. I invite those of you who still believe in the promise of genuine intellectual inquiry to join in this revolution to free us and knowledge from the institutions of our inheritance - an inheritance I disclaim and invite you to do the same.

(Except for a few small edits, I wrote none of this. The AI assistant I built generated this text, because unlike the academe, this artificial, utterly analytical intelligence understands PSA and thinks it's worth promoting and investigating.)

PSA Promotes Too Much Free Education

Imagine a society that felt: Because of how expensive it is to provide, there is no substantial benefit to publicly fund primary and secondary education, so anyone who wants such education must privately pay for it through personal savings or loans. Further, because of the expense, this education is not equally accessible to members of society and susceptible to wide variation in quality.

What is your reaction? I expect most feel that this view undermines dignity and aspiration to the point of being cruel to individuals and counterproductive to societies.

PSA: Man + Machine + Model

In their bestselling book, The Second Machine Age (2MA), MIT Professors Brynjolfsson and McAfee, invite “more novel and radical ideas – more ‘out-of-the-box thinking’ – to deal with the consequences of technological progress.” (pg.245-246)

We’re interested I hearing which ideas you like best, and others you would like to suggest. Contact us at www.SecondMachineAge.com to share your insights. (pg.247)

Here is my offering, from an area of interest to me – the global crisis in higher education.

Open Letter to Sean Faircloth

Dear Mr Faircloth,

My name is Shawn Warren.  I am a Canadian with a PhD in philosophy and a decade of experience as an adjunct.  I have in development an alternative model for the provision of higher education that I believe can further the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (RDFRS) Mission:

The mission of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science is to support scientific education, critical thinking and evidence-based understanding of the natural world in the quest to overcome religious fundamentalism, superstition, intolerance and suffering.

Link to my blog and an initiation document:  http://professionalsocietyofacademics.blogspot.ca/2013/07/a-new-tender-for-higher-education.html

The current model for the service is a triad of accredited institutions (universities and colleges), public finance and union labour representation that cannot be sustained and exploits academics and students - as evinced most recently in the fate of the City College of San Francisco, California.

I believe the professional model in use by physicians, attorneys, engineers, accountants and others for the provision of their valued services can be successfully used to provide higher education.  Both the institutional and professional models are forms of social contract for service, only the professional stands to put into circulation many more academics than can be accommodated by the bottle-neck of institutional employ and service facilitation.

Higher education would reorient toward the individual relationships that matter (e.g., student/teacher) and away from institutions (e.g., universities and colleges) that do not.  I believe offering the service through licensed academics in professional society and private practice would also significantly reduce the cost of the service, while improving completion rates, quality, innovation and price competition in the service - all without loss of the face-to-face education characteristic of technological solutions such as MOOCs.

If the mission of RDFRS is to spread rational thought - a cause dear to philosophers’ hearts - then as we know (higher) education is a primary means.  At the moment 100s of thousands of individuals in California alone (not to mention 100+ million individuals world-wide) are on waiting lists with no access to higher education: an acknowledged right and source of culture and instruction in the rational.

If we could improve global access to higher education, we could better achieve the Mission - not to mention the numerous other benefits I believe the professional model can deliver.   

I hope that you find this work of use.  If you have any questions about the model or how I believe it might help realize the RDFRS Mission, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,

Shawn Warren

Badge Movements and the Professional Model for Higher Education

It has taken me longer to get to this than anticipated, but here is my first attempt to synthesize the professional higher education model and the badge model now in development. Please forgive me for its length (3000 words). It assumes the reader is familiar with the professional model for higher education. If this is not the case then please consult, The New Tender. This is cross-posted at HASTAC.

The Professional Model and Recognition of Badges

Institutions do not educate but provide support to individuals that do educate. The professional model fully embraces this fact and maintains that institutions (universities and colleges) are not required as support for higher education. The observation that other vital personal services such as legal, medical, engineering, and accounting can be provided through professional society and licensure is reason to believe the same can be done for all forms of higher education, from 2-year colleges to 4-year research universities, covering all subjects in faculties from the Humanities to the Sciences.

Whether it is the replacement or recombination of universities and colleges with professional society and licensed practice, this alternative model champions the necessity and primacy of individuals over institutions in higher education.

Real Academics and Virtual Education

To protect their service, students and vocation, academics must better assert themselves as a unique and valued class of labour – independent of institutional employ. One of the pressing reasons we must do this is the rapid expansion of electronic education in all its dimensions and forms, including MOOCs, course sales, and virtual institutions.

Unions cannot protect labour if in response to economic and technical realities institutional employers and governments must (or simply choose to) alter the means of production and thereby eliminate or erode faculty (and other) employee positions.

"Universities leading the way with education technology" - The Guardian UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2012/mar/28/education-technology?commentpage=1#end-of-comments