Essay

new essay on the neocolonial, neoliberal sociocultural project we’re calling ‘ai’ and jesuit higher ed

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another installment in my ongoing commentary and critique of the neocolonial, neoliberal sociocultural project we’re calling ‘ai’ is out from jesuit higher education. it’s a meditation and reflection on the importance of context prior to any question of functionality regarding generative software in education, more on the institutional rather than the classroom level.

the piece was in final stages of publication when magnifica humanitas dropped, so i was only able to gesture toward it in quick revision, but mh is based strongly in prior work coming out of the vatican, so i wouldn’t have changed much anyhow.

hope all is well for all of you!

a note to alert folks in the global north of what the catholic bishops of the global south are up to

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in my ongoing concern for eco-spirituality amidst our machine- and efficiency-obesessed age, i wrote up a brief intro to the recent message from the bishops’ conferences of asia, africa, latin america, and the carribean calling out the need for real action at/from cop 30 later this year.

they really go for it, using words like “degrowth” and “colonial extractivism” and call out the financialization of the natural world and call for “alternatives to the capitalist model.” it’s important stuff that i pray regularly we folks in the global north will start taking seriously.

for what it’s worth.

also, a happy st. aethelwold’s day tomorrow to one and all!

another essay on generative software, based in observations “from the field” and looking toward how to move forward together

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here’s my latest, now up at inside higher ed, on the ways in which irreality is mediating between (interfering with?) students and instructors in higher ed.

how do we scrutinize reality together (the university’s general institutional mission) when we aren’t seeing it?

i’m realizing more and more that the humanist tradition of western education needs to constantly be clarifying how statistical probability software isn’t going to magically form knowledgeable, grounded, savvy humans and in fact throws them off the scent. if neoliberal productivity for its own sake is the goal, sure; but i can’t agree with that as a desirable end for education of any sort.

a belated post on a new(ish) essay in _spirit & life_

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in the thick part of the term amid other family stuff going on too, apparently i completely forgot to announce that i had an essay published in the benedictine magazine spirit & life back in march.

it’s on mortification, which isn’t a terribly popular topic of essay writing these days, but i find it fascinating. it comes out of my ongoing research on and reading of the 17th-century benedictine dame gertrude more. especially the talks i gave at dame gertrude’s foundation of stanbrook abbey back in october.

a little light reading!

and, a closing to the trilogy of essays on chatbots and education, or “on vanity”

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hi folks! back to short poems and close-up pictures of flowers and rocks and stuff soon, but here’s the final installment of the trilogy of essays i wrote this spring as the term wound up and we all handled the situation with chatbots in the educational space we inhabit with our students.

thanks to the plough team for getting this last salvo out into the world!

pax inter spinas.

yet another new essay on the “generative ai” deal, in _dappled things_

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in my ongoing walk toward what i’m now thinking of as a “renewed humanism” in education, the arts, daily living, wherever, here’s another contribution to the discourse on our ‘artificial information processing’ (or ‘machine training application,’ or anything but the usual obfuscatory advertising phrase the industry’s gotten so many of us to use) present.

this one’s on the contribution the catholic intellectual tradition can make to help us see clearly and maintain awareness of the difference between living creatures and machines, between minds and computers, etc. tho it doesn’t draw on any dogmatic aspect of that tradition—rather the anthropological aspects. i hope it’s accessible to anyone and everyone of good will, irrespective of (a)theological commitments.

new essay on academic integrity in _jesuit higher education: a journal_

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as some of you may know from things i’ve said, i’m the current academic integrity director at marquette university. it’s been a very active year in the office with the release of ‘generative a.i.’ chatbots to the general public. among other things.

but this new essay, thankfully, is a broader reflection on the nature of integrity in higher education generally, based in my first year’s observations and lessons learned. it explores integrity in three “keys”: medieval monastic (because it’s me), aristotelian/thomistic (which was a new endeavor for me), and existential (to round things out).

even if you’re not in higher ed at all, there are still reflections on integrity as a virtue (in the greek sense of “excellence”) in life generally here that could be of interest.

pax inter spinas

ps. included here are some images of wild geranium from this spring that didn’t get on here.

new short essay (with audio option) on earth as mother, earth day, our extractive capitalist mode, conversion to the earth, etc.

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hey all. if you’ve gotten updates from me long enough, you’ll know that, in the midst of lots of hikes and plants and scholarly musings on medieval monasticism, sometimes things get theological/spiritual here.

if you’re game for that, i’ve got a new “eco-theological” essay out on focolare media’s website today. you can read it there or listen to me read it as there’s an audio option.

i’ve been looking for a place to use st. gregory the great’s observation that “the earth has given birth to us all; we are right to call her our mother,” and this is it!