Higher education in the United States is reeling from an array of challenges: from declining enrollment and fewer international students, to politicized defunding and coordinated attacks on academic freedom. Perhaps no disruption has been so sudden as the rise of generative artificial intelligence. This talk surveys its impacts: what happens to traditional notions of authorship, expertise, and academic integrity in the age of AI? What are the implications for cognitive development and future job markets, and how are our institutions responding? In policy and in practice, how might higher education reimagine its role in a world increasingly shaped by algorithms?

About the speaker:

Dr. Cynthia Chris is a professor in the Department of Media Culture, College of Staten Island, City University of New York. She has written on an array of subjects in film and media history, including broadcast regulation, theories of authorship, nature documentaries, and the cultural history of animal life. Her publications include the monographs Watching Wildlife (2006), The Indecent Screen: Regulating Television in the Twenty-First Century (2019), Crab (2021), and Cuckoo (2024), and the edited volumes Cable Visions: Television Beyond Broadcasting (2007) and Media Authorship (2013). Dr. Chris served as a Faculty Leadership Fellow in the Office of Faculty Affairs at the City University of New York in 2024-25.

📅 Date: Tuesday, November 25, 2025

🕑 Time: 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm

📍 Venue: Function Room, 11/F, Faculty of Social Sciences, The Jockey Club Tower

🗣️ Language: English

🔗 Register here: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?guest=Y&ueid=103766