Just a short comment on how students are often the ones who are enacting change and taking on leadership roles within their institution. Academic leaders rarely take on the responsibility to create these spaces unless there is a demand for it. This emotional, mental, and physical labour that student take on to better their college/university is added on top of their existing school, work, and personal life loads.

As we have been discussing throughout this article, queer representation in leadership is needed, but as @TaliT mentioned earlier (their statistics post), there are a lot of barriers that queer people face in higher education where leaders are intentionally blocking them from taking on leadership roles or being open about their queerness.

We've expressed this common theme in our class discussion too where a lot of what we're reading make us say "yes, we need this" but they are not practiced in reality.

I wonder what we will do individually to action these "we need this" feelings in our everyday work life? Especially when the work days feel long.

I understand that this is a journal article and perhaps needed peer-reviewed articles for submission to this journal (???) but I think there can be merit to using non-peer-reviewed articles, especially for a topic like queerness. From a participant perspective, someone might feel more comfortable expressing themselves in a blog or book format, as opposed to a study, due to power dynamics.

Both author's have acknowledged their social positions as white and cis-gender. It seems like culture is largely absent from this literature review and only mentioned a few times. As we have been discussing intersectionality and our positionality this week, I wonder whether acknowledge of our social identities, and perhaps what we cannot personally speak to, warrants excluding articles from authors that can speak to that perspective?

I personally think that it is not difficult to find authors who have written about the perspectives we cannot personally speak to, but I'm curious to know other folks opinions!

I agree that academic leaders should focus on queer student, but also wonder whether there should also be a focus on queer staff? In my experience, queer students feel more comfortable and empowered when queer staff also feel comfortable to share their identity and experiences. Lee (2022) did a case study highlighting how "sign" and "symbols" of queerness were important in helping queer staff feel comfortable in the workplace, which then allowed them to be support for students. This study specifically mentioned that senior leadership visibility was important to staff empowerment.

Not only is English the more dominant language in AI models, but AI platforms tend to be built by newcomers. Forbes estimated that approximately 65% of AI companies in the US were founded by newcomers in 2023, but English was still the language the models were trained in. Language is such an important part of someone's culture and identity, and it is becoming a popular translation tool, but as it has been discussed there are limitations and biases towards "smaller languages."

I find the term "superhuman intelligence" interesting because is it "superhuman" if it is artificially made?

AI as a conformity tool to try and align everyone with the cis, white, European/American, male perspective. I wonder/fear how this may impact newcomers to Canada and the US? From my Masters thesis, different academic cultures use AI differently. Some are more over-reliant on AI, some it is not usable. When someone comes to a new country that encourages the use of AI in some ways, plus the impacts on enculturation, the pressures of assimilation, etc., the biases that AI have towards marginalized group could be internalized or exacerbated? I'm curious to know other peoples thoughts on this!

Piggy backing off the other comment on this section! We must ask what is the definition of "fairness" and "justice" but also in the larger scale (when it comes to policy/procedures/laws/etc.) who is creating that definition? Are there multiple perspectives at the table from diverse backgrounds? Or are these definitions being created by the ruling class and ultimately maintaining the existing inequitable structures/systems?

Several of you have added commentary to this, which I agree with them all! I would like to add that it's also important to ask who developed and implemented these "interlocking structures." To me, this sentence reads as these are separate structures that got caught up in cultural hegemony, but I think that it's important to note that these structures were also created by the ruling class (white, European, male).

This is an increasing concern in academic excellence/program quality departments. Institutions are prioritizing AI due to the federal government's "AI for All" strategy. Program Advisory Committee's for program development are citing AI as an "in-demand" skill. This has caused me to question how we can maintain "academic excellence" when AI (with its ethical concerns and flaws) is becoming so heavily integrated into the program/course development, modification, and renewal processes.