May, 2025
The study of History is grounded in original research, authorship, analysis, and discovery. It demands unending curiosity, observant and critical evaluation, and the ability to engage and communicate complex and difficult ideas. Our mission as scholars is to create and cultivate knowledge in constructive and original ways.
The Department of History is committed to the intellectual purpose of higher education, to striving for new knowledge, and to standards of scholarly excellence. We understand learning to be a challenging process of self-discovery and self-realization, a responsibility to ourselves and others, and a project of thoughtful reflection and imagination. All of these are fundamentally projects of the human, individually and in community, and a core feature of a liberal arts education.
The University’s Code of Conduct and policy of academic responsibility declare social responsibility, mutual respect, intellectual honesty, and integrity to be core community standards. The Department of History holds that the use of generative artificial intelligence [AI] and large language models [LLMs] – as technologies of aggregation and homogenization rather than origination, and often sources of incorrect information – constitutes plagiarism and fabrication, and as such runs counter to these policies, to the intellectual purpose of education, to the respect of intellectual property, and to the department’s own Learning Goals, which include acquiring knowledge, researching and critically evaluating historical evidence, reading carefully and with purpose, and writing clearly and persuasively with original, rigorous arguments.
We also note the serious and problematic nature of the ethical and environmental costs associated with AI and LLMs, and call on the university to acknowledge these in its own practices. We recognize that some digital tools may be important to ensure accessibility and full participation, but we do not accept AI and LLMs as mechanisms or proxies for literacy.
Accordingly, the Department of History requires students and faculty to take full authorial responsibility for their work. Original thought and effort are required for the work of teaching, learning, and scholarship, including (but not limited to):
- Reading and comprehension
- Designing research agendas
- The process of research, locating and analyzing sources
- Structuring, revising, and presenting writing
- Articulating arguments and analysis in written and verbal form
Those who choose not to do so may be held in violation of the University’s Code of Conduct and expectations of academic responsibility, and may receive sanction accordingly.