Jill Lepore (Harvard) has a new book, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State (2026). The Chronicle of Higher Education has a wide-ranging interview with Lepore on ideology, artificial intelligence, and the return of mysticism. And, of course, these ideas’ implications for higher education, including Lepore’s concerns about a technology-driven decline in student-faculty connection.
But this interview’s flashy headline isn’t the bombshell. The interviewers note that Lepore “worries that Harvard specifically and higher ed broadly are aiding and abetting the diminishment of [their] own students’ intellectual capacities” by failing to address AI use thoughtfully. But Lepore also acknowledges using AI in her own historical research—where the use case is, well, extraordinarily strong. Lepore’s historian instincts show: her concerns are about intellectual culture and open conversation, rather than resistance to change over time.
Some excerpts and a link, below the fold.
Evan Goldstein & Len Gutkin, “Has Harvard Indeed Lost Its Mind”: Jil Lepore on AI, Angry Students, and Absent Leadership, Chron. Higher Ed. (Oct. 8, 2026):
Lepore: Do I use it? There are definitely times when I have used these tools. I would be silly to deny it. I actually really love NotebookLM. Have you ever used NotebookLM?
Goldstein: I have not.
Lepore: . . . Or I have this 19th-century diary that spans 40 years. I’ve read it from beginning to end many times. It’s a farmer, and he often observes the weather. I think there might be something really interesting to be done thinking about the weather. To see if there was enough there, I might ask NotebookLM, “What percentage of the entries include weather information?” . . .
Lepore: I think it’s necessary, not to go into the confessional and kneel before the priest . . . , but to actually just be honest. Honesty is necessary for good scholarship, and it’s also necessary for faculty to work together and for the administrators and the faculty to work together. . . .
So when you think about that, and then you think about people saying, “Oh, I’ll let ChatGPT do my scholarship for me,” it’s kind of the same thing. That’s why it’s important to call out the first thing in order to understand the rot that makes the second thing possible.
Related TaxProf Blog coverage:
- Washington & Lee Requires AI Training Before 1L Classes Begin (Oct. 10, 2026)
- Writing is Learning . . . Still and Despite AI (Oct. 1, 2026)
- Law Schools Tell Students to Put AI Away (Sept. 9, 2026)
- McGinnis: AI and the Public Purpose of Legal Scholarship (Sept. 1, 2026)
- Do Law School AI Bans Teach the Wrong Lesson? (Aug. 12, 2026)
- Getting to AI (July 14, 2026)
- Chicago Law Bans Laptops in 1L Classes to Address AI (July 11, 2026)
- Salinas et al.: Law Professors Prefer AI over Peer Answers (June 6, 2026)
- Is AI the Devil? (May 8, 2026)
- Bloomberg: Bridging the Gap: The New Realities of Law School and Legal Practice (Feb. 14, 2026)
