AI in Education AI Minute Newsroom 2026-08-24

A university just banned AI in its core course — for the teachers as well as the students, including for grading

The Chicago Maroon reported on 23 August that every sequence in the University of Chicago's Social Sciences Core will run as an "analog" course from this autumn. Technology is generally prohibited in the classroom, students read texts on paper and discuss them device-free, and AI-assisted writing is banned — for instructors as well as for students. AI-assisted grading is banned too, unless a faculty member carefully validates it against human marking. The guidance came in a memo from Jenny Trinitapoli, Master of the Social Sciences Collegiate Division, written in consultation with sequence chairs and instructors, and reports a "strong consensus… that our sequences are best understood as a pedagogical setting without AI" and a goal of first equipping students to "read, write, and think without dependence on AI." Until now the policy had been left to each instructor. The memo cites a 2025 report from the university's Artificial Intelligence and Education Working Group stressing "the centrality of human engagement, human interaction, and human expertise." There are exits: professors may request thoughtful experimentation with AI, or carve out device use for specific purposes such as examining datasets or checking citations in library resources. It follows the university's law school, which in July barred laptops, tablets and phones from all core first-year classes.

Why it mattersMost university AI rules are anti-cheating rules: they tell students what they may not submit. This one is different in a way worth noticing — it binds the instructors too, and it reaches grading, the place where AI has quietly spread fastest in higher education because it saves the most labour. That makes it a claim about what the course is for rather than a policing measure. Whether it works is a real question: banning the tool does not remove it from the dorm room, and the evidence on device-free teaching is thinner than either side of this argument usually admits. But as more institutions write AI policy this autumn, this is the first prominent version that treats the seminar room itself as the thing being protected, and it will be copied or argued with accordingly.

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A university just banned AI in its core course — for the teachers as well as the students, including for grading

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