Opinion | AI Splits the American University in Two

Oct. 21, 2026 3:34 pm ET

Hysteria over artificial intelligence has divided Americans into two fearful camps: those afraid that the technology will advance too quickly, laying waste to human endeavor if not humanity itself, and those afraid that the failure to embrace AI quickly will doom us to irrelevance or Chinese domination. In few places has this debate been as feverish as in the American university.

But AI’s role in the university is a rare case in which both the restrainers (who argue that AI harms learning) and the cheerleaders (who argue that universities will fall behind without it) are right.

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