Then, from the back, a graduate student asked a devastating question: “How am I supposed to build a life in the face of this news? Where do I find hope?”

I find myself thinking of her as the headlines once again turn apocalyptic, with a new threat looming. The public resignation of Jacob Coxon, a former researcher with Anthropic, over his fears about AI’s fast-growing genocidal superpowers, has sparked a much-needed call for an industry-wide slowdown.

It’s past time for more robust regulation of AI companies, and I applaud the whistleblowers calling for it. Meanwhile, we average citizens are left reeling. How are we to live in the face of these novel apocalyptic visions? How do we make our grocery lists and take our kids to school while knowing that AI could be planning a highly-coordinated global drone attack or designing a lethal infectious virus within the decade? Where do we find hope?

Back in 1982, during the thick of the Cold War, when the apocalyptic flavor of the day was the threat of nuclear annihilation, the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton published a seminal paper: “Beyond Psychic Numbing: A Call to Awareness.” In it, he named the human tendency to numb out in the face of absurdity. We repress our knowledge that everyone we love might imminently be bombed into radioactive rubble so that we can tend to the dinner, the tantrum, the deadline. This is practical and necessary and sensible. It is also spiritually corrosive, not to mention politically ineffectual. The existential threat still exists; we have simply turned away.

I raise this not to cast any blame. I myself behave this way, every day. I, too, have exigencies: classes to prep, papers to grade, dinners to make, bills to pay. I have a whole repertoire of numbing strategies, many of them at my literal fingertips. (I’m looking at you, iPhone.) I raise it because I want to become more aware of how I tend to numb out, so that I can resist it. And, crucially, because I need your help.

Yes, you, dear reader. You there, phone in hand, perched, just like me, on the dizzying spin of this aching earth. I need you to help me imagine this latest existential threat, to feel the way it quickens my blood, prickles my skin, and swells tidally within me. I need you to help me sit with the feeling, to keep me from numbing it away.

Why? Because it is this willingness to fully imagine the threat—to feel it in our bodies—that allows us to connect with one another in our shared feeling, and through that connection, to act.

Lifton concludes his paper by calling the cultural moment “desperate but hopeful.” Awareness of the nuclear threat was blossoming, and with it a movement toward disarmament. Energized by Dr. Randall Forsberg’s “Call to Halt the Nuclear Arms Race,” and goaded by authors like Jonathan Schell, who published a series of urgent essays in the New Yorker, people spoke out in city councils, places of worship, public housing, labor unions, and town meetings. And they organized. A million people demonstrated at the UN’s Special Session on Disarmament just a few months before Lifton’s article published—the largest disarmament protest in U.S. history. It took a groundswell—a wave of action spurred by deep human feeling—to pull the U.S. and the Soviet Union back from the brink.

We are at a similar moment now, only the deadlocked powers are the U.S. and China. But awareness is alive and growing. People are pushing back against the massive data center build-out. As of May 2026, at least 430 local opposition groups across 40 states had sprouted up—a sevenfold increase since December. And this activism is already producing results: since 2024, more than 170 billion dollars in data center investment across 20 U.S. states has been blocked, stalled, or canceled. Even more encouraging: data center opposition bridges political divides. A recent Pew Research survey found concern about AI outranks excitement among most Americans.

Awareness is rising, and with it, hope. The AI-pocalypse is not inevitable. Not if we speak out, organize, and—soon—vote. We the people still have the power to elect representatives who believe in AI regulation, and to hold them accountable for instituting change. We can still pull back from this particular brink. But to do it, we need to resist numbness’ siren call and allow ourselves to really imagine, in a physical, bone-and-blood way, the disaster we want to avoid. Not all the time. Not even most of the time. But enough of the time to keep ourselves from looking away.

“This issue,” concluded Lifton in 1982, referring to nuclear proliferation, “is deadly serious, but our call is not a grim one. It is a call to life.” A call, in other words, to the fullness of fellow human feeling. It’s emotional and spiritual work, as much as it is political. And it requires support—from loved ones, friends, communities.

I’ll do it if you will, dear reader. Let’s live fully, together.

For over a year the world has watched a genocide unfold in Gaza, with seemingly little that those who watched in horror could do to change the course of events. I know many of us struggled to go on with our regular, safe lives, pursuing our professional goals, enjoying the comforts of home with family and friends, while carrying the knowledge that these atrocities had been allowed to continue, fueled by my tax dollars and the blessing of our government. As the descendent of refugees from the 1948 Nakba, I’m part of the Palestinian diaspora, but I know these feelings of trying to find a ‘work-genocide balance’ extended beyond those with familial and ancestral ties to the region. The recent firehose of executive orders coming out of Washington are having their intended effect of diluting our attention on any one issue, but Trump’s new declarations on Gaza have once again hyper-focused many of us on this unbelievably horrific denouement to the pain and suffering of Palestinians.

So, are we allowed to talk about any of this on campus yet?

I research and teach at a research-intensive university in the U.S. My subject area is not directly related to what’s happening in Palestine. I struggle daily to stay focused on my “niche” academic topic (as important as I believe it to be); I struggle to stand up in front of a classroom of students and not talk about what is happening in Gaza. I have tenure, which means a lot of latitude on the topics I pursue, the outlets where I want to publish, and what I teach. In theory, I’m supposed to be able to speak out loud what others are scared to or don’t have the microphone to do. Where corporate America and government agencies are often stifled, universities, the argument goes, are the beacons of free speech and critical thought.

Yet I write this anonymously. I’m sure I will be called a coward for this choice, but I don’t even feel safe wearing a keffiyeh on campus anymore, given the very real fear and threat of doxxing, retaliation at work and threats to my livelihood. My tenure theoretically protects me in my current posting, but other tenured professors have fallen. And if I were to apply for a different job or a promotion, I cannot be sure that some of the vocal and powerful wouldn’t quash my chances, simply for speaking out on an internationally recognized genocide and open calls for ethnic cleansing from a U.S. president that we were all witness to.

Are my fears exaggerated? My university isn’t particularly high-profile. It hasn’t been targeted by media or Congress (yet). But we are seeing these kinds of consequences beyond the Ivy League. A nurse practitioner at the University of California, San Francisco, faced suspension for wearing a watermelon pin.  A justice studies professor at San Jose State University was suspended for engaging with pro-Palestinian justice groups. Harassment of pro-Palestine academics is rampant in Canadian universities as well. While protests and encampments may not be grabbing headlines anymore, universities are still shutting down speech on Palestine.

All sorts of new terms entered our regular lexicon this year: anti-Palestinian racism, the Palestine exception to free speech, Progressive except Palestine (although the sentiments behind these have certainly been around for a while). In academia, we should be fighting these corrosive forces, not manifesting them on our campuses.  Academic freedom is theoretically untouchable, but the line somehow is drawn at the issue of Palestine. We should be able to talk openly about the painful history and continuation of, and revived calls for, colonization and ethnic cleansing in Palestine without being called antisemites (as Harvard has recently decided) or getting cancelled. We should not be in the situation where it is open season on students and faculty who call for their universities or organizations to divest from companies that benefit from genocide. And we should not have to hesitate to join protests against our government’s very real complicity in this atrocity, on campus or off, for fear of police brutality, arrest, or deportation.

I truly hope that the cease-fire will hold and lead to some immediate relief for Gazans, and that more sensible plans are put in place so that Palestinians and Israelis alike are able to live in dignity and security. But as we collectively hold our breath to see what happens next in Gaza (not to mention the ramp up in settler violence  and ongoing forcible transfer of Palestinian communities in the West Bank) we should at the very least be able to have these difficult conversations on campus. Maybe one day I will feel safe enough in my skin and my position to sign my name to something like this op-ed. For now, all I can hope for is to bring more attention to this issue so that maybe some university presidents (and the Trustees and elected officials who quietly but powerfully shape the academic landscape) are brave enough to take a stand and counter the Palestine exception.

These findings reveal that while AI offers promising educational advancements, it also brings about strong academic honesty concerns. Educators must, therefore, be empowered with comprehensive AI knowledge, not to penalize students for using it in their assignments but to foster ethical and informed AI usage in academic settings.

As an Assistant Professor of Communication, I first noticed academic misuse of AI when I saw numerous students answer an online quiz question with similar off-topic answers. I asked them to reflect on Asia Rising, a documentary about Asian rappers, connecting it to our topic of media technology and cultural globalization. After I posed the quiz question to ChatGPT, I received a similar response to the ones submitted by the students about smartphone usage in Asia instead of hip-hop music.

Incidents like this highlight new academic misconduct issues. Without my background knowledge in internet research, I wouldn’t have so easily determined the source of the misunderstanding. However, uninformed instructors also need knowledge about AI to ensure the continuance of fair and credible student assessments. This knowledge is necessary because of uncertainty concerning how AI usage constitutes academic dishonesty.

In a Los Angeles Times essay, Professors Angela Duckworth and Lyle Ungar advocate using chatbots in classrooms as a teaching tool rather than banning them. “Instead, we must find a way forward in which such technologies complement, rather than substitute for, student thinking,” they write. Their perspective captures competing approaches to addressing this moment in educational history.

On the one hand, programs like the New York City Public Schools have chosen to ban ChatGPT outright, labeling its use as a violation of academic integrity. Indeed, as my experience shows, some students view ChatGPT as a tool that completes their work without considering its tendency to generate false information, thereby spreading misinformation.

Nevertheless, outright bans are impracticable and inefficient since it is difficult to tell when and if students use AI tools. AI use in assignments is a complex issue that differs from clear-cut plagiarism violations like submitting someone else’s work as one’s own. Furthermore, proposed solutions, such as TurnItIn.com‘s plagiarism detection software, are inconsistent in identifying AI-generated content.

In contrast to blanket bans, educational institutions like Stanford University have created teaching guides that encourage professors to adopt AI policies for their courses, supporting its use in specified capacities. However, while faculty-created AI content policies are essential, ethical practices rather than punitive measures should be their primary goal. To do so, guidance on constructing and enacting AI policies should go beyond a few web pages on a university website.

Instead, we need a comprehensive framework for AI use in the classroom, contingent on support for professional development by administrators. Professional development for educators regarding AI use, both as users and creators,should involve training that promotes the use of AI in curriculum enhancement by updating educators on this rapidly evolving technology.

Educators must also be equipped with the knowledge and tools to exert influence within the AI industry and shape policies that will inevitably impact their teaching settings. For example, the Center for Integrative Research in Computing and Learning Sciences (CIRCLS) hosted the AI and Education Policy Expertise Exchange, which brought together educators and industry leaders to shape the future of AI-driven learning and create innovative policy initiatives and resources. This project demonstrates that recommendations for addressing AI in education must be more than a few sentences in a syllabus.

Leaving such a massive transformation in technology for individual instructors to address. Educational institutions must support teachers and staff in understanding AI technologies and how they work before recommending or allowing them in the classroom. To maintain academic standards, administrators must give time and money for professional development around these technologies to equip their classroom workforce to set their AI content policies.

]]> https://visiblemagazine.com/equipping-educators-for-the-age-of-artificial-intelligence/feed/ 7 9664 https://visiblemagazine.com/not-your-grandfathers-parkinsons-disease/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=not-your-grandfathers-parkinsons-disease https://visiblemagazine.com/not-your-grandfathers-parkinsons-disease/#comments Sat, 29 Apr 2023 21:45:41 +0000 https://visiblemagazine.com/?p=8747 The discovery of a biomarker that is 90% accurate in the diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease makes this a transformative Parkinson’s Awareness month. Awareness months for diseases are a chance for the general public to learn more, and with this new possibility for the early and accurate diagnosis of the second fastest-growing degenerative neurological disease, there is a lot to learn. The stereotypes of what Parkinson’s Disease looks like and who it impacts need to change.

I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease ten years ago at age 39, with my symptoms starting around age 27. Parkinson’s Disease is not an “old man’s” disease; 40% of those diagnosed are women, and 20% are diagnosed under the age of 50. Rarely, PD can be diagnosed as early as two years old. But the image of the hunched-over white man continues to come up if you google PD, and does a disservice to women and younger people, who tend to wait on average 10 years to be properly diagnosed. We must change the image of PD for everyone, to increase awareness and speed up diagnosis.

Not all of us with PD have tremors. Surprised? It’s true; the shaky old man is wrong on three counts; gender, age, and symptom! I am a young(er) woman whose predominant symptoms are stiffness and slowness. The three cardinal symptoms of PD (tremor, rigidity, and slowness) do not occur in all people with PD. The phrase used to describe us is “If you’ve met one person with PD, you’ve met one person with PD”. We each have different constellations of symptoms which may indicate different underlying disease processes, although that is still being researched.

Why is proper diagnosis so important? The sooner you find out about PD, the more control you can take to slow the progression of the disease. While no treatments exist right now to slow the disease, exercise (yes, good old exercise!) has the most evidence as a disease-modifying intervention. I personally hate exercise, but I know that it is the one thing that I can do that will have an impact on how fast this disease moves.

 So, what are early possible signs of PD? These can include frozen shoulder, loss of sense of smell, REM sleep disorder, reduced arm swing, smaller handwriting, or a slight limp. None of these alone (or together) definitively diagnose PD but can be early warning signs to check out with your doctor. I had many of these, but didn’t know any of them could be related to Parkinson’s until after my diagnosis, which was 10 years after some of the symptoms had started.

On this momentous occasion of a scientific breakthrough that could change the landscape for PD, it is essential to learn more about the disease and prevent the kinds of experiences many of us have had with delays in diagnosis. Happy Parkinson’s Awareness Month! I would love to be less aware of this disease, but I feel lucky to know that so many scientists and organizations are working toward new treatments, and most of all, a cure.

In both cases, the perpetrators have since been caught and videos and images of the men behind these crimes continue to circulate. I cannot help but interrogate the media narrative that drives headlines about anti-Asian hate crimes. The elephant in the room are the controlling images of Black men who are shown on camera assaulting Asian people. Centralizing Black men as criminals illustrates the white supremacist narratives that have historically criminalized the Black community, while relying on Asians to maintain anti-Black racism. A University of Michigan study by the Virulent Hate Project reveals that the majority of the offenders of these crimes are white men. According to NYPD Asian Hate Crimes Task Force commander Tommy Ng – mental illness, not race – is the common factor in many of these attacks.

In 2020, footage of Vicha Ratanapakdee’s killing circulated online, causing outrage, fear, and grief among the Asian American community. Actors Daniel Dae Kim and Daniel Wu offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to capturing the suspect. The actors did this to shine a spotlight on hate crimes that were largely being ignored by the media. Inadvertently, the reward placed a bounty on young Black men in the San Francisco Bay Area. Eventually, two people were arrested for Ratanapakdee’s murder. However, it would be the image of Antoine Watson that circulated the news. Very little information about Malaysia Goo, who was arrested as an accessory to the crime, was mentioned.

In response to the massive increase in anti-Asian hate crimes, the New York Police Department created an anti-Asian hate crimes task force. Immediately, this caused concern among many Asian American community groups, as more policing may lead to increased profiling of Black men. Current media narratives are not helping to mitigate these concerns. Controlling images of Black men assaulting members of the Asian community, in contrast to the reality that white men are statistically the perpetrators of such violence, does nothing to ensure the safety of Asian Americans. Instead, it pours gasoline on to the fires of anti-Black racism within the Asian American community.

Indeed, hate crimes are carried out by people from all walks of life. In no way am I trying to diminish the severity of the cases previously mentioned. Since the beginning of the pandemic, StopAAPIHate.org has reported over 11,000 hate incidents. Last year, 1 in 6 Asians in this study experienced a hate incident. And 83% of parents surveyed express concern about the safety of their children in the current climate. To ask a community to harness their fear, rage, and grief in the name of solidarity and racial consciousness may seem like a tall order.  However, to ensure our safety, we must recognize that the root of anti-Asian violence is white supremacy, not Black criminality.

We must be critical of media narratives that continue to center Black people as criminals and ask ourselves: what is the story being told and who benefits from these specific narratives? Instead of reading headlines, re-posting, and reacting to viral videos, we must actively follow these stories and dig for deeper truths.

We must have honest, sometimes painful conversations within our respective communities about anti-Black racism and the intricate ways these messages circulate within the Asian American community – from the ways in which we are impacted by colorism, to normative comments that dehumanize Black people.

We must demand more representation in the media, government, and education. This means being active participants in using various media to tell the stories that humanize us.

Finally, we must bridge the gap between the Asian American community and other communities at large. For many Asians in the United States, the desire to achieve the American dream has always centered whiteness. We must fully embrace the textures of our experiences and engage in solidarity with communities whose historical legacies have always paved the way for us. From the 1964 Civil Rights Act opening doors for the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, to the current Breathe Act providing a model for Asian Americans to create legislation that can combat anti-Asian violence, Asian Americans must commit to fighting against white supremacist institutions that have defined us as model minorities and perpetual foreigners.

As a psychologist, I know that personality characteristics and behavior are impacted by a number of factors. From the time of my birth, I was probably wired as a goal-oriented person who would dream big dreams and then put in the work to achieve them. But the particular circumstances of my childhood—raised by a single mother as a mixed-race Black child in a predominantly white rural community—also contributed to my strength.

My story is similar to that of many Black women. I encountered the obstacles of discrimination, microaggressions and lack of representation (not to mention many bad haircuts from stylists who swore they knew how to cut curly hair, but clearly didn’t) and decided that I would be successful regardless of what was thrown at me. To be sure, I had many privileges that contributed to that success including light skin and “good hair” (in spite of those bad cuts). But I learned that I could not wait for opportunities to come to me — I needed to go after them. This mindset of strength served me well, or so I thought.

I’m not the only Black woman breaking up with being strong. Simone Biles prioritized her own health over the expectations of a world to whom she owed nothing. Dena Simmons did the same thing when she left Yale University and founded her own educational consulting firm. And, I can’t help thinking about Cheslie Kryst, the 30-year-old former Miss USA, who died by suicide over the weekend.

Until Kryst died, she appeared to have it all — a prime example of a strong Black woman. While we may never know her full story, as a psychologist and a Black woman, I can only imagine the burden that she was carrying on the inside while appearing strong on the outside.

I should have broken up with being strong when I advised a Black graduate student on her doctoral dissertation focused on the strong Black woman and the impact of that schema on Black women’s health outcomes. Black women have always been perceived as strong. The intersection of our marginalized identities has meant that our survival, and the survival of those around us, has depended on us making a way out of no way and working twice hard to be proved half as good.

These stereotypes or schemas can be empowering as they connect us to the incredible legacy of those who have gone before us. But they also can come at a great cost. Alescia Maraboushontrell Hollowell, the graduate student I advised, found that of all the components of this schema, the “obligation to manifest strength” scale was associated with high levels of depression.

That perceived strength also means that we are not provided the same pain management as white women during childbirth. Even as children, we are likely to be viewed as adult women rather than as girls, which may explain the disproportionate rates of juvenile justice involvement for Black girls.

A related construct in the psychological literature is John Henryrism. This is named after the fictional character who worked himself to death and refers to the process of coping with and controlling high numbers of stressful experiences in order to succeed. These attempts to solve society’s huge problems as an individual with finite resources provide compelling data for why Black women are more likely to die from cardiovascular disease than white women.

I didn’t start the break-up process until the double pandemics made it blindingly obvious that I could not plan, execute and reason my way out of a problem that I didn’t create and was not responsible for solving. During a department town hall in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, I cried in front of students and colleagues. As humiliating as those tears were at the time, they were honest. And they resulted in increased support from a group of fabulous colleagues who continue to look out for me and help shoulder my load as the pandemics rage on. Of course, I am still one of the few faculty members at the full professor status in my university. This is appalling as I live in a city that is 30% Black, but not surprising as Black women make up 2% of full professors nationwide.

And, it may be (OK, it definitely is) part of the aging process, but my body is reminding me to soften up. As much as I resent their intrusion on my work and family schedule, my stress-induced headaches remind me to take a break and delegate tasks when I need to recover in bed. Similarly, my tight shoulders and back alert me to the need to spend as much time stretching and cooling down as I spend on my runs and workouts.

My social media feed has also helped me. In particular, the instagram account of Morgan Harper Nichols and the podcast, Therapy for Black Girls, have helped remind me that I am just as deserving of growth opportunities, second chances, softness, slowness and rest as the other people around me. In short, I am leaning into my humanity just as I have always tried to nurture the humanity in those around me.

Part of this process is discerning when and where I can actually drop the strength facade. As someone with a lot of privilege, I can usually choose to exit spaces and circumstances that are threatening to me. But these choices are not afforded to all Black girls and women.

All the more reason to reserve my strength to keep fighting for a world where this choice does not have to be made by anyone.