University Posture toward Artificial Intelligence
October 2026
“Our first task is neither to demonize nor idolize technological tools, but to utilize them on the basis of a fundamental principle, namely that truth is a common good and not the property of those with power or influence. We must therefore promote an ecology of communication.”
—Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence (Encyclical Letter of Pope Leo XIV)
At Â鶹Porn, we believe that significant innovation must be judged by how well it serves the dignity of the human person and the common good. Artificial intelligence is no exception.
AI is already reshaping how people learn, work, communicate, and make decisions. It offers real opportunities to expand access to knowledge, strengthen teaching and learning, improve administrative effectiveness, and support discovery and service. Artificial intelligence presents extraordinary opportunities for higher education, but it also raises some profound questions about the very nature of teaching and learning. We cannot embrace AI without considering critical questions about truth, judgment, privacy, equity, accountability, and the kind of human formation a university is called to foster.
As a university community, a community of learners, we have been engaged in a series of conversations seeking to understand this technology and seeking to discern a path forward for how our university will respond.
Goal
My goal in issuing this statement is to describe a posture from which the Loyola community can continue our conversation about AI. I want to highlight principles that can inform our conversations and introduce a more official process for wrestling with its place in our university.
By offering this, I am not announcing an official policy on artificial intelligence. I am not attempting to create a comprehensive AI policy or a rulebook for how every faculty member should teach. And I certainly do not believe that I—or any one person—has all the answers about this technology and what it will ultimately mean for higher education – and the world.
I know there is a wide range of views about AI within our community and thus believe that describing a posture, is a more helpful approach than a rigid policy.
Some of you may be excited (or at least intrigued) about AI’s possibilities. Some of you may already be incorporating it into your teaching, scholarship, and research. Some of you are deeply concerned about what it means for learning, for academic integrity, for intellectual property, creativity, employment, privacy, and even our understanding of what it means to be human.
And I suspect many of us—including me—find ourselves somewhere in between: intrigued by what may be possible, concerned about what could be lost, and trying to understand a technology that is developing much faster than our ability to fully comprehend its implications. And a technology that has with it concerns of the direst consequences possible. I think all these perspectives belong in our community conversation.
Posture
I use the word posture deliberately. Our tradition asks us to discern and reflect before acting. It asks us to consider the moral and ethical implications of something and not merely whether it can be done. Our mission focuses on preparing students for the world of work—a world increasingly impacted by AI.
Discernment for Loyola cannot simply be, “Are we for AI or against AI?”
The more important—and arguably more interesting—question is: How should we, Loyola University Maryland, as a Jesuit, Catholic university respond to artificial intelligence?
- What should we embrace?
- What should we approach with caution?
- What should we resist?
- And perhaps most importantly, what are the things about education, about human relationships, and about the formation of our students that we must be determined to preserve?
Those are not simply technological questions. They are educational questions. They are ethical questions. They are philosophical questions. They are economic and social questions. And, for us, they are mission questions. Questions that require careful discernment and reflection. Questions that ask us to wrestle with the applications of our values in a new context.
Deep learning requires intellectual friction. Students need to struggle with difficult ideas, wrestle with ambiguity, make mistakes, and work their way toward understanding. That struggle is not an obstacle to learning. Very often, it is where the learning happens. AI has the potential to remove much of that friction. And while that can be enormously beneficial, we must be careful that in making intellectual work easier, we don't inadvertently make intellectual development less rigorous.
There is also a natural desire to figure out what we are going to “do” about AI—to develop a strategy, establish policies, and put a neat bow around the issue.
But I would argue that one of the biggest mistakes we could make right now is to convince ourselves that we have figured this out. We haven't and neither has higher education more broadly.
As a university, we should be especially comfortable sitting in complexity, asking difficult questions, and acknowledging uncertainty. That is, after all, what we teach our students to do. This does not mean standing still. We need to experiment, learn, adapt, and make thoughtful decisions along the way.
Our posture should be one of intellectual humility, purposeful experimentation, and unwavering commitment to our mission.
That is why I think a university is exactly the kind of place where this conversation ought to be happening. And I believe a Jesuit university has something particularly important to contribute to this conversation.
Principles
Artificial intelligence may fundamentally change how we educate. But we cannot allow it to change why we educate.
Our Jesuit identity asks us to consider human dignity, justice, the common good, and the development of the whole person. So, as we think about AI, our response should not be either uncritical enthusiasm nor reflexive resistance.
Guided by our Jesuit values and our university’s mission statement, we can frame AI through the lens of Jesuit principles and ask key questions such as:
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How does this technology advance human dignity and justice and where may it exacerbate existing inequities?
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Where can this technology enhance the common good through human learning, creativity, discovery, and flourishing?
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Where can it contribute to the development of the whole person and help students become better thinkers, writers, researchers, scientists, teachers, business leaders, and citizens?
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And where might reliance upon it prevent them from developing the very capacities that a Loyola education is intended to cultivate?
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Where can it help advance student success?
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How might it be used or not used to prepare students for a diverse and changing world?
Those are difficult questions, ones we will continue to wrestle with into the future. Doing so together, from a posture of discernment and reflection, grounded in our Jesuit, Catholic values provide a firm foundation from which we can lead our students and each other through this critical time in our history.
Process
To date, our AI conversations have taken place in various pockets across the university. I would like to organize an official process and a mechanism to have a robust, thoughtful conversation as a university community where we examine critical questions and discern AI’s place in our learning environment.
We need to hear from faculty across disciplines, from people who are enthusiastic about AI and people who are skeptical of it. We need to hear from those who have experimented extensively with these tools and from those who have deliberately chosen not to use them. And student voices are essential to this discernment. Their experience of this transformation will be different from ours, and their voices need to be part of the conversation.
To this end, I am establishing a Presidential AI Council to organize an inclusive approach and help us articulate principles that can guide Loyola as we navigate this new environment. I am asking this council to engage the questions raised above as well as others brought forward by our community. I have asked two faculty members, Toja Okoh, associate professor of history, and Jake London, assistant professor of information systems, and to lead the council. More details will be shared about how individuals can volunteer and participate. Following our shared governance protocol, we will be reaching out to the faculty affairs committee for faculty volunteers.
I envision the council as interdisciplinary and representative of the breadth of our community. We need people who understand the technology. We need people who question it. We need humanists, scientists, social scientists, educators, ethicists, technologists, and others around the same table.
The intention is to help us continue asking good questions, examining emerging developments, encouraging responsible experimentation, identifying risks, sharing what we are learning, and helping Loyola navigate a landscape that will continue to change.
At the heart of the issue this council will take up is this essential question: What does it mean to educate the whole person (mind, body, spirit) in an age of artificial intelligence?
That may ultimately be the most important question Loyola can ask.
Conclusion
Universities should be places where complicated questions can remain complicated long enough for us to understand them.
Jesuit education gives us an additional resource: the tradition of discernment—the willingness to examine experience carefully, to listen to different voices, to consider consequences, and ultimately to make choices grounded in our deepest values.
I don’t know exactly where our answers to those questions will take us.
However, I am convinced they are questions worth asking—and that this is a community capable of wrestling with them thoughtfully, critically, and with the kind of discernment that should characterize a Jesuit university.
Thank you. I look forward to our ongoing conversation.
Terrence M. Sawyer, J.D.
President