{"id":2712,"date":"2026-03-18T14:45:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T14:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/03\/18\/new-faculty-coalition-fights-against-artificial-intelligence-the-new-paltz-oracle\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T14:45:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T14:45:09","slug":"new-faculty-coalition-fights-against-artificial-intelligence-the-new-paltz-oracle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/03\/18\/new-faculty-coalition-fights-against-artificial-intelligence-the-new-paltz-oracle\/","title":{"rendered":"New Faculty Coalition Fights Against Artificial Intelligence – The New Paltz Oracle"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/i>March 18, 2026<\/a><\/span> <\/i>Katie Ondris<\/a><\/span> <\/i>News<\/a><\/span> <\/i>0<\/a><\/span>
Mary Holland was frustrated. Having been a professor for decades, she was overwhelmed by how the tides had begun to shift; students were using AI more often, and she didn\u2019t feel they were getting what they needed out of education. She needed to do something. So she started talking to colleagues in and out of her own department and founded Educating Without AI.
Educating Without AI is a group made up of SUNY New Paltz faculty who advocate for the ability to teach AI-free classes. Holland, an English professor, started this group in the fall of 2025. Since then, they\u2019ve held an AI faculty forum and sent out surveys concerning opinions on AI usage. Currently, over 80 people are part of the group. 
\u201cAI interferes with absolutely every single thing that it is my duty to teach my students to do,\u201d Holland said. \u201cCritical thinking, cognition in general, attention to texts and to details, the ability to think critically on their own, to do research that\u2019s meaningful, to understand the texts they\u2019re working with, to communicate in writing their ideas, to construct arguments, every single step of all of those things, students have to learn to do on their own.\u201d
The campus AI surveys were the group\u2019s latest endeavor, with separate forms sent to both faculty and students. 197 faculty members and 974 students at least started the survey. Preliminary results show that the majority of participants answered that their overall opinion of AI in higher education is negative. Participants were concerned that AI is negatively affecting students\u2019 ability to write, and both faculty and students expressed a desire to teach or take classes with an AI-free designation.
\u201cI\u2019m not teaching writing intensive courses anymore because of [AI],\u201d said Glenn Geher, a psychology professor who put the survey together. \u201cI\u2019m reducing writing assignments dramatically, which is really sad to me, because I\u2019ve always told people, if students get nothing out of these four years except learning how to really write and communicate to an audience, that\u2019s all we need.\u201d
Geher noticed a pattern, particularly in his online classes, of students using AI to write entire papers. Even if they don\u2019t use AI for the entire assignment, Geher asserts that using it for brainstorming or outlines robs the students of their ability to articulate their own ideas.
\u201cIf you\u2019re brainstorming with AI, then it\u2019s the opposite of brainstorming,\u201d Geher said.
Provost William McClure has been receptive to the group; Holland met with McClure early on about her concerns with AI, and he was willing to hear them out. 
The group has been in communication with the Office of the Provost as well. \u201c[Provost William McClure] listened to our concerns and was supportive about our initiatives. The work was ours to do, to be clear, but he did not express any opposition,\u201d Holland said. \u201cAnd he lent financial and institutional support to the recent Faculty Forum on AI that we held in February.\u201d
Educating Without AI is currently fighting for an AI-free course designation and a unified campus AI policy. They aren\u2019t trying to prohibit AI usage overall; they are just looking for clearer standards on the matter. In the future, Holland hopes to create a committee of students and faculty to stay on top of developments in AI and how they might impact education.
\u201cTo have this as a recognized policy on campus would mean that students would know ahead of time, when they sign up for a course, whether they\u2019re going to be able to use AI,\u201d Holland said. \u201cThey would know what it means when a professor says, \u2018this is AI-free.\u2019\u201d
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