Social sciences (sosc) Core classes will generally prohibit the use of technology in class and ban the use of artificial intelligence tools by students and instructors beginning this fall, according to a Social Sciences Collegiate Division (SSCD) memo obtained by the Maroon.
The guidance, issued by SSCD Master Jenny Trinitapoli in consultation with sequence chairs and instructors, reflects a “strong consensus… that our sequences are best understood as a pedagogical setting without AI,” the memo reads. “Although practices have varied course-by-course in recent years, in AY 2027 sequences are collectively designed to be taught as ‘analog’ courses.”
Under the new guidelines, students will primarily read texts on paper and engage with them via device-free guided discussions, in contrast to previous years, when technology policies were left to the discretion of instructors, with many permitting the use of laptops and digital texts in class.
“[I]n the SOSC Core we first equip students to read, write, and think without dependence on AI, just as we equip students to read, write, and think beyond the bounds of conventional views or leading ideologies,” the memo reads.
The memo also states that “AI-assisted grading has no place in the SOSC Core unless faculty are carefully assessing its validity against human grading,” and that all sosc syllabi will be produced by human scholars.
While the policy recommends a total ban on AI use in sosc classes, it allows for “thoughtful experimentation” by professors who want to incorporate AI into their classes, in consultation with divisional leadership.
Instructors may also “carve out exceptions to the device-free norm for specific purposes,” such as “to collectively examine tabulations in a dataset, to troubleshoot code, to revise a page of text, or to access library website [sic] for guidance about citation practices and learn shortcuts.” Students with certain accommodations through Student Disability Services will also be permitted to use devices in class.
In response to questions from the Maroon, Katelyn Yoshimoto, a spokesperson for the College, provided additional context on the reasoning behind the new sosc guidelines and cited the University’s broader strategy related to AI and academic life.
The 2026-27 SOSC Core sequences are designed to engage students primarily through paper texts and guided conversations, unmediated by devices. The guidance, developed by the SOSC Core chairs, recommends device-free classrooms for these small group, discussion-based classes. It is intended to reduce classroom distractions and encourage face-to-face discussions among students and instructors, an important element of SOSC Core classes. The guidance also notes that individual faculty members may make exceptions to the device-free norm for specific purposes, including for students with approved accommodations through Student Disability Services.
Across campus, members of the UChicago community are building a human-centered vision for AI that balances its potential as a tool for research, pedagogy, and productivity with recognition of its limitations. This approach is ‘at once skeptical, ethical, and ambitious,’ as described by a 2025 report by UChicago faculty. President Paul Alivisatos articulated this vision in his February remarks at a campus conference on AI research and a recent message calling on students to think ‘with, without, and about’ machines.
An individual familiar with the policy changes told the Maroon that civilization studies sequence instructors were asked for their perspective on adopting similar guidelines, but that no explicit AI or technology restrictions are being implemented at this time. Yoshimoto told the Maroon that course chairs for the humanities Core are “currently having discussions regarding the 2026-27 academic year.”
The memo cites as influential a 2025 report on AI and education by the University’s Artificial Intelligence and Education Working Group, which, according to the memo, “emphasizes the centrality of human engagement, human interaction, and human expertise to UChicago’s educational mission.”
Other committees addressing the University’s relationship with artificial intelligence were announced earlier this summer alongside the unveiling of a partnership between Anthropic and UChicago. Beginning in September, students will receive free access to the Claude Enterprise suite of large language models; faculty and staff were given early access to the tools in July.
In response to a question about how sosc’s AI guidance would intersect with the University’s Claude rollout, Yoshimoto wrote that “[u]sing generative AI well requires judgment and discernment: different contexts have different expectations, and access to Claude or any AI does not mean that every use is appropriate or permitted. In the classroom, College students should follow the expectations around AI established by each instructor and course.”
SSCD is not the only division of the University to go AI-free in its introductory sequences. In July, the University of Chicago Law School announced a similar prohibition on electronic devices in the classroom and that it would require in-person exams for most 1L courses beginning next academic year.
“[T]hese guidelines afford students the freedom to think for themselves, to listen to one another without the cacophony of other (disembodied and non-human) voices in the room, to make mistakes, and to change their minds as they engage with thinkers of the past, with us, and with their fellow students in good faith, face-to-face,” the SSCD memo reads.
Editor’s note, August 24, 2026, 11:20 a.m.: This article has been updated to reflect comment from the University and from the College and to clarify that students with certain accommodations will be permitted to use devices in class.
Matthew G. Andersson, '96, Booth MBA / Aug 24, 2026 at 10:37 am
Faculty are restricting AI because they’re afraid it may know more than they do; uncover more data, or refute faculty interpretive bias which is overweight in social science, and hence that division’s analogue posture. Moreover, banning various digital technology in a classroom is relatively meaningless: its use is pervasive outside the classroom which room is no more than 25% of an average student’s location allocation (even less for faculty whose teaching loads and labor utilization rates are below 50%). Many college students do not attend classes, especially lectures, so enforcement is also porous. Like Law, Socsci is compartmentalizing AI to assert their legacy institutional domain over technology which threatens to replace them. Moreover, if a university were following an “analogue” pedagogical model (like instrumental music study), the entire university environment would have to do so. Of course it already is physically: the classrooms that students use were built in the 1930s, modeled after 19th century British and German universities. Even the most modern versions still consist of hard frame chairs and tables facing a podium, behind which is a blackboard with chalk and erasers, all lit with florescent lighting. True AI integration will modify the instruction environment which will resemble aircraft and naval simulators, with eventual optical holography, including digital professors. Instruction cost will approach zero. The academy doesn’t otherwise understand the relevance of the UN GEO-7 report; its “depopulation dividend” and its specific link to AI: UChicago is accommodating analogue human tradition as long as it can be monetized, while blindly following institutional strategic direction from the foundation sector including Rockefeller, which strategy, like technology, follows human self-obsolescence. See “The Biggest Problem in Higher Education,” 23 August, American Thinker
alumni '24 / Aug 24, 2026 at 7:19 pm
Booth just accepted anyone in ’96, huh?
Albert / Aug 25, 2026 at 12:19 am
What utter twaddle.
Margaret Sereno / Aug 27, 2026 at 7:10 pm
Margaret Sereno The College A.B. Your futuristic vision is interesting, and I’d like to know what happens at your institution of higher learning when the disembodied AI instructor loses its train of thought and begins to spout gibberish, thereby stopping itself in its tracks and forcing itself to assign the student a grade of incomplete. I had this happen during a recent online course, and I longed for the days of in-person discussions Cobb Hall.
Matthew G. Andersson, ‘96 Booth / Aug 30, 2026 at 10:58 pm
A cynic might assert that embodied faculty regularly “loses its train of thought and begins to spout gibberish” by its inherent fractional cognition, heuristic bias, and perception limitations. That partly explains grade inflation among other distortions. You otherwise raise an interesting question concerning the AI agent problem including context, compounding error, rogue risk, and sprawl. Unfortunately Law is drawn to agent governance which only compounds those problems, but is not surprising given its bias. AI “agentic logic” is deregulated which is why Socsci analogue policy is a form of technical ignorance: it seeks to close or suppress the agent feedback loop, and thereby the human pairing. It is anti-intellectualism.
henry / Aug 23, 2026 at 4:32 pm
very proud of copy for finding typos in official university releases