Humanities Departments Defend Intellectual Difficulty Against AI

Tyler Austin Harper, a visiting humanities professor at Bard College, argues in a Dec. 14, 2025 essay that widespread use of large language models has made knowledge feel cheap and undermined close reading, take-home essays, and student originality. He contends humanities must resist accommodating these trends and instead emphasize difficulty and sustained intellectual effort to preserve their pedagogical value.
Key Points
- 1Documents rising student reliance on large language models, eroding close reading and take-home essay integrity.
- 2Argues perception that knowledge should be effortless undermines humanities' cultivation of rigorous, effortful intellectual skills.
- 3Recommends humanities reassert difficulty as core pedagogy to preserve relevance and foster deep thinking.
Scoring Rationale
Provides timely firsthand observations on LLM impacts in education, but is single-source opinion without empirical evidence.
Sources
Public references used for this report.
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