{"id":1203,"date":"2025-10-20T01:35:02","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T01:35:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harwoodben.com\/?p=1203"},"modified":"2025-10-28T17:32:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T17:32:16","slug":"on-awakening-transdisciplinarity-and-what-ai-is-teaching-the-liberal-arts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harwoodben.com\/?p=1203","title":{"rendered":"Co-Creating with the Machine: What AI Reflects Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

A reflection on the 2025 Connecticut College AI & Liberal Arts Symposium<\/strong>,<\/a> exploring how AI is reshaping liberal arts education through cross-disciplinary learning, human connection, and a shared sense of awakening.<\/em><\/p>\n

Introduction<\/h2>\n

Across three autumn days at the AI and the Liberal Arts Symposium at Connecticut College, the conversations felt less like a conference and more like a collective act of awakening.<\/p>\n

First, a huge thank-you to our colleagues and friends at Connecticut College for hosting such a fantastic event. This was, without question, the best professional development experience I\u2019ve had since the pandemic.<\/p>\n

I only found out about it a few weeks ago, so I wasn\u2019t able to submit a proposal this time\u2014but I highly<\/em> recommend the symposium to anyone interested in the intersections of AI and the liberal arts. It\u2019ll return next year, and you can bet I\u2019ll be responding to the call for proposals to share the exciting work we\u2019re doing at Skidmore that contributes to this dynamic and evolving space.<\/p>\n

I arrived early and after registering, participated on a group tour of Connecticut College’s amazing arboretum. <\/a>It’s open to the public and I highly recommend a visit.<\/p>\n

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College Center at Crozier-Williams<\/p><\/div>\n

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Welcome packet<\/p><\/div>\n

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Vista with weeping conifers<\/p><\/div>\n

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Reflection in the Pond<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

AI isn\u2019t just a new tool for the liberal arts \u2014 it\u2019s a mirror.<\/p>\n

Everywhere, that mirror reflected something back: our assumptions about knowledge, our fatigue with disciplinary boundaries, our uneasy faith in human judgment. Some framed AI as a pedagogical partner, others as a provocation. But beneath every debate ran a shared undercurrent \u2014 that the liberal arts must not retreat from AI, but reinterpret themselves through it.<\/p>\n

Beyond Silos: Following the Phenomenon<\/h2>\n

One recurring theme was the generative convergence of disciplines, where boundaries became bridges. Panelists from across fields described how AI resists neat categorization: it writes like a humanist, reasons like a scientist, and fails like an artist.<\/p>\n

A digital humanities panel explored how generative tools can help students see structure in story or bias in data. An environmental studies group used AI-generated imagery to visualize climate change as cultural narrative rather than scientific abstraction. A philosophy instructor co-taught a course with a data scientist, letting students interrogate both logic and ethics in the same breath.<\/p>\n

These moments revealed a shift \u2014 not from one discipline to another, but beyond discipline entirely \u2014 into what several speakers called transdisciplinary learning<\/em>: inquiry that follows the phenomenon, not the field.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an approach that feels truer to the liberal arts than ever \u2014 dynamic, synthetic, and driven by wonder rather than walls.<\/p>\n

The Liberal Arts Awakening<\/h2>\n

Across sessions, a pattern emerged \u2014 one that keynote speaker Lance Eaton<\/a> gave a name to in his address, The Sleep of the Liberal Arts Produces AI<\/em>.<\/a> His metaphor caught fire throughout the symposium. In panels and workshops afterward, people kept returning to it: the idea that AI didn\u2019t replace us \u2014 it revealed where we\u2019d already fallen asleep.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI didn\u2019t replace us \u2014 it revealed where we\u2019d already fallen asleep.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That sleep took many forms.<\/p>\n

Dismissal \u2014 the academy\u2019s habit of treating new media and emerging technologies as distractions rather than dialogues.
\nFetishization \u2014 the way we mistake performance of intellect for presence of curiosity.
\nExternalization \u2014 the quiet outsourcing of our public mission to private systems and paywalled knowledge.<\/p>\n

Panelists didn\u2019t treat these as abstract critiques; they tied them to practice. A librarian showed how paywalled scholarship feeds commercial AI systems \u2014 what she called academic fracking<\/em>. A literature professor confessed that she once told students to avoid ChatGPT, only to later use it with them to analyze power structures in Victorian novels. A group of students described AI as their learning partner, not a shortcut \u2014 proof that the boundaries between tool and teacher are already blurring.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI didn\u2019t wake the liberal arts \u2014 it found them stirring.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Human Element: Productive Struggle, Rediscovery, and Redesign<\/h2>\n

What made the symposium electric wasn\u2019t the technology \u2014 it was the humanity pulsing through every discussion. Faculty spoke less about how to control AI and more about how to stay human beside it.<\/p>\n

One recurring idea was productive struggle<\/em> \u2014 not as an obstacle to learning, but as its catalyst. AI tools created just enough uncertainty to be generative. Students found themselves asking new kinds of questions: What should I be doing less of? What does originality look like now? How do I make the best use of time with a professor, when the \u201cexpert\u201d is increasingly a facilitator of knowledge, not its gatekeeper?<\/p>\n

Faculty, too, found themselves in unfamiliar territory. Long-held routines were challenged by tools that could draft, translate, or simulate. The struggle wasn\u2019t about obsolescence \u2014 it was about reorientation. What habits of mind are worth keeping? What does rigor mean when the machine can \u201cwrite\u201d an answer?<\/p>\n

And in that discomfort, something vital reemerged: the shared space of learning. Office hours became less about solving and more about sense-making. Less about correctness and more about discernment. Students didn\u2019t need someone to check their work \u2014 they needed someone to help them recognize what kind of thinking it was.<\/p>\n

In that spirit, the liberal arts reasserted their enduring role \u2014 not as defenders of tradition, but as designers of discernment. When algorithms simulate knowledge, discernment becomes the highest art form.<\/p>\n

AI may have accelerated this shift, but the liberal arts were always headed there. What emerged across the symposium was a deeper understanding: that growth comes from tension, that rediscovery often begins with unlearning, and that the future of learning may look less like mastery and more like a shared choreography of questioning.<\/p>\n

Epilogue: Sora and the Mirror<\/h2>\n

After the symposium, that metaphor of the mirror stayed with me \u2014 especially as I experimented with Sora<\/em>, a tool from OpenAI that turns words into video. I had received early access just before the conference began. By the time it ended, I had shared all six of my invite codes with colleagues who were curious, eager, and already dreaming up experimental test cases. Invite codes are a fascinating way for software companies to roll things out.<\/p>\n

Watching that rollout unfold felt strangely familiar \u2014 like history rhyming. Back in 2002, when I was a webmaster in the College of Agricultural Sciences at Penn State, a computer science grad student forwarded me a link to something called Google Beta<\/em>. \u201cYou should check this out,\u201d he said. I did. I joined. And unknowingly, I stepped into something that would transform how the world searches and knows.<\/p>\n

Before parting ways, a few of us made videos \u2014 short visual essays. You only get 10 or 15 seconds to try out your prompts. A philosopher in conversation with a clone of herself. A student\u2019s dream rendered into shifting light and architecture. A reimagined classroom set in the year 2130. Each piece asked, in its own way: If AI can imagine with us, who decides the shape of the story?<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Sora has that same quality \u2014 a shimmer of arrival. Something just beginning to shape the future of creation, while reflecting back the questions we haven\u2019t stopped asking.<\/p>\n

The technology isn\u2019t just extending imagination. It\u2019s echoing it. It’s reflecting it. And in that echo, it\u2019s asking us what kind of storytellers we want to be.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/harwoodben.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/download.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n
https:\/\/harwoodben.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/download-1.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n

<\/h2>\n

Conclusion: The Liberal Arts, Awake<\/h2>\n

By the final plenary, the tone had shifted from anxiety to resolve. The liberal arts weren\u2019t under threat \u2014 they were awakening.<\/p>\n

The symposium closed not with consensus, but with a shared rhythm: a refusal to let automation define what it means to learn.<\/p>\n

Across those three days, AI became less an existential threat and more an existential invitation \u2014 not to escape technology, but to wake beside it.<\/p>\n

Curious. Critical. And still \u2014 profoundly human.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

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A reflection on the 2025 Connecticut College AI & Liberal Arts Symposium, exploring how AI is reshaping liberal arts education through cross-disciplinary learning, human connection, and a shared sense of awakening. 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