Larry Catá Backer's comments on current issues in transnational law and policy. These essays focus on the constitution of regulatory communities (political, economic, and religious) as they manage their constituencies and the conflicts between them. The context is globalization. This is an academic field-free zone: expect to travel "without documents" through the sometimes strongly guarded boundaries of international relations, constitutional, international, comparative, and corporate law.
Global China Pulse (GCP) is a biannual Open Access journal that focuses on China’s international engagements in their various manifestations. Launched in 2022 as a spin-off of The People’s Map of Global China and as a sister publication of the Made in China Journal, GCP aims to provide scholars and practitioners conducting grounded research on China’s global footprint with a platform to publish content in diverse styles and experiment with various approaches and formats. GCP rests on two pillars: the conviction that today more than ever it is necessary to bridge the gap between the scholarly community, civil society, and the public; and the related belief that Open Access is essential to ethically reappropriate academic research from commercial publishers who restrict the free circulation of ideas. The journal is published by the Global China Lab, a non-profit organisation founded by some members of our editorial board with the aim of advancing open knowledge about China.
But this place is really the largest group of Trump Derangement Syndrome people ever put together at one time, I suspect. Some of you are lucky that our last dinner was cut short because I had brought with me what would possibly have been — I’m telling you, I had something. I was going to go after you. I feel so badly doing this. It’s got to be such a letdown. But your lives were really in danger the last time, for an opposite reason. But on the plus side, your careers were saved. (Transcript: Trump Remarks at White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner)
President Trump gave a fairly long set of remarks at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner, reprised on 24 July 2026 after the abrupt end of the first dinner because of a security threat, which was ultimately contained. The transcript is reproduced below from the Singju Post (Transcript: President Trump Remarks at White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner).
The transcript of the President's remarks are well worth reading; not necessarily for its text as such, but for its comedy. It is that engagement with comedy, revealing of its subject as well as of its "singer" (in this case the President) that provides food for thought. I think here of comedy in its old sense: ""narrative with a happy ending; any composition intended for amusement," from Old French comedie (14c.), "a poem" (not in the theatrical sense) and directly from Latin comoedia, from Greek kōmōidia "a comedy, amusing spectacle," probably [Beekes] from kōmōidos "actor or singer in the revels," from kōmos "revel, carousal, merry-making, festival" + aoidos "singer, poet," from aeidein "to sing." But it is a means of communication that substantial semiotic inter-subjectivity in terms of the feedback or dialectical loops that create and project meaning and that are made meaningful through its textual and interpretive play among a community that evidences its interpretive solitary in being "in on the joke."
All of this, of course, served me as an invitation to the start of something like a very brief and preliminary consideration of the semiotics of the comic. And that made me curious about the evolution of the signification of comedy at least, again, in a preliminary and very flattened way. Plato appeared focused on mockery. But not just mockery but its connection to laughter and laughter's connection to the diminution of critical social significs. He might be said to have treated laughter with suspicion in the Republic, warning against depicting gods and heroes as objects of mockery, and offered a "superiority" account in the Philebus, describing laughter as a mixed pleasure arising from perceiving another's ignorance or self-delusion, tinged with malice (phthonos). Aristotle, in the Poetics, distinguished comedy from tragedy by its imitation of persons worse than average in the mode of the ridiculous (to geloion)—a species of the ugly or defective causing no real pain or harm. His lost second book of the Poetics on comedy is thought by some scholars to be echoed in the anonymous Byzantine Tractatus Coislinianus, though this connection remains disputed. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle also discussed eutrapelia (wit) as a virtuous mean between buffoonery (bomolochia) and boorishness (agroikia). And yet the ancients did enjoy a good comedy--attached to and perhaps to heighten the significs of the tragedy that represented the more elevated (and elevating) forms of the performance of collective solidarity with the core elements of their meaning universe. This the connection and the significs of comedy--hierarchical and values based, the baseness of comedy not juts a reflection of the truth values and social premises of tragedy but its inverted (and sometimes perverse) amplifying mirror.
This dialectical and perhaps necessary relationship was built into ancient performance and found their way into contemporary theory. It might also be said to have been built into, at least in some respects, the Roman frameworks attached to rhetoric. Cicero (De Oratore, De Officiis) classified types of wit (facetiae) and urged decorum, cautioning against cruelty or mockery of genuine misfortune. Quintilian (Institutio Oratoria, Book VI) offered an extensive taxonomy of rhetorical devices for provoking laughter. Horace (Ars Poetica; Satires) addressed comic decorum and stylistic consistency, alongside a model of urbane, morally corrective wit.
Much of this might be thought to have slumbered, to some extent, but also seeped into, medieval engagements. Medieval treatment of comedy was largely grammatical and classificatory rather than performative, transmitted through commentary on Terence and Plautus. Evanthius (De Fabula, sometimes paired with Aelius Donatus's commentaries) defined comedy as depicting private, everyday affairs of modest or low-status characters ending happily, contrasted with tragedy's depiction of great figures ending in disaster. Isidore of Seville (Etymologiae) transmitted this vocabulary to a medieval readership largely without access to live comic performance. On the ethical side, John of Salisbury (Policraticus) considered the subject sideways; his concern centered, it seems, on the moral boundaries of levity at court, though this was incidental to a broader satirical project rather than a focused theory of comedy. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 168) directly engaged Aristotle's eutrapelia, treating playfulness as a virtue subject to moderation. Independent theoretical treatises on comedy remained scarce until the Renaissance recovery of the Poetics. The hierarchies and the dialectics remained intact, though, in some form or another through development in the Renaissance, enhanced and developed after rediscovery of the ancient texts. The classical comedies produced the inverted mirror through which the moral clarity of tragedy and more generally of more or less solemn public and religious performance, could be augmented, sharpened, and signified.
The 19th century was in many ways the start of a sort of rebellious stage, but one that never wandered far form home. Comedy now becomes more instrumental, and its aesthetics more transformative in a way that might produce in comedy a level of autonomy from tragedy and other solemn performances that might elevate that form of expression beyond its traditional (captive and mirroring) role. One might think about Nietzsche's focus on laughter, in which laughter functions as a recurring existential and aesthetic category. In The Birth of Tragedy (1872), his discussion of Attic Old Comedy and figures such as Socrates and Euripides forms part of his broader argument that the rationalizing, "Socratic" turn in Greek culture displaced the tragic, Dionysian sensibility—comedy here appears largely as a symptom of that decline rather than as a value in its own right. His mature position is more affirmative: in The Gay Science (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, 1882), cheerfulness and the capacity to laugh—including at the disorienting implications of the death of God—are treated as marks of intellectual and spiritual strength rather than levity. The inversion of the ancients is now inverted in turn, in a way that mirrored the focus on other inversions in social and power relations. One might even wonder whether the fundamental notion of ressentiment (hostility directed toward an object that one identifies as the "cause“ of one's ”frustration,“ might induce a rejecting/justifying value system, or morality, which attacks or denies the perceived source of one's frustration) might itself be understood as comedy in this sense. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1885), Zarathustra explicitly urges his listeners to "learn to laugh," positioning laughter as a corrective to the "spirit of gravity" and to the pity and resentment Nietzsche associates with prior moral and religious traditions. In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche describes his own writing, particularly Zarathustra, as uniting profundity with cheerfulness, asking to be read in a comic register. Across these texts, laughter functions less as a judgment about another's inferiority (the Platonic model) and more as an act of self-affirmation and overcoming—a reversal of the superiority-based accounts inherited from antiquity. In this sense, the tragic, and solemnity in public and religious performance, might itself serve as the comic.
Though Edmund Husserl does not offer a comparable treatment, the extension of phenomenological method to laughter might be understood to come came from later thinkers. Consider Helmuth Plessner, whose Laughing and Crying (Das Lachen und das Weinen, 1941) treats laughter (alongside crying) as a bodily boundary-response that arises when a situation exceeds the expressive resources otherwise available to a person, rather than as a judgment of incongruity or superiority. One never strays far from mockery and laughter. The only question is the interpretation, the significs of those performances as a function and in the context of counter-performance. Plessner's account understood as a phenomenologically informed successor to Husserl's method than as an exposition of a position Husserl himself held. Framed this way, Nietzsche through to phenomenology might be understood as suggesting a shift in the terms of comic theory—from imitation and rhetorical propriety (the Greco-Roman and medieval frameworks above) toward laughter as an existential or embodied phenomenon.
That, at last, brought me to the American present. A semiotic approach to comedy shifts the inquiry from what comedy imitates, or what existential function laughter serves, to how comic meaning is encoded and decoded within a community of interpreters. I would be tempted to suggest, on the basis of my own prior musings, and drawing on my own signification of Peircean sign theory and Luhmannian systems theory, that social practices function as self-referential systems of signs: meaning is generated not by any inherent content in an act, but by the internal rules a community uses to code, transmit, and interpret that act as belonging to a recognized category. Applying that general framework to comedy suggests that a "joke" or comic performance is not self-evidently comic; it becomes comic only when a community's shared interpretive code licenses a given utterance to be read as transgressive-yet-safe, converting what would otherwise register as insult, aggression, or blasphemy into sanctioned play. And it turns a flattened sequential hierarchy (tragedy-solemn performance to comedy and back) into a sort of feedback loop in ritualized collective performance platforms, one in in which each is, in part, a necessary element and expression of the other--they consume and produce themselves and each other.
The American celebrity or fraternal "roast" is a useful test case for this framework. Structurally, a roast inverts the ordinary social sign system governing praise and insult: statements that would, outside the ritual frame, constitute personal attack are re-coded, through explicit ritual markers (the dais, the designated "roastmaster," the honoree's presence and visible tolerance, the reciprocal exchange of insults among participants who profess affection), as tokens of esteem. The semiotic work of the roast lies precisely in this recoding function—the ritual frame is the sign that instructs the audience how to interpret the insult-signs that follow, much as a systems-theoretic account holds that a legal or ideological system supplies the internal code that tells participants how to read an otherwise ambiguous act. Read this way, the roast provides a modern venue for classical and medieval sensibilities: it preserves Aristotle's boundary of the ridiculous as harm-free defect, and Cicero's and Quintilian's concern with decorum; it also enacts, in ritual form, the Nietzschean reversal discussed above, in which laughter directed at a target becomes an act of affection and affirmation rather than a mark of contempt. What the semiotic lens adds is an account of the mechanism—the shared code—by which a community recognizes the boundary between sanctioned mockery and genuine offense in the first place. And it suggests that it is not sequence but looping that makes both essential to the each other.
It is with that in mind that one might find lots of interesting insights within the comedy that it is possible to extract from the remarks. Whether one finds that comedy and those insights funny, valuable, "truthful" or abhorrent, I leave to the reader. Each of these is, of course, a sign of identity--and the location of the reader within self-referencing interpretive sub-communities that in the aggregate constitute the political community of the United States. And it is a reminder of the continued power of the character (that term understood in all its senses) of the blind, elderly antagonist in Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose, Jorge of Burgos, a person consumed with a hatred of comedy and laughter on Platonic grounds time shifted forward--laughter undermines the fear of God. His hatred causes him to poison the pages of the sole surviving copy of Aristotle's lost second book on comedy, even as, fulfilling his role as the Abby's librarian, he guards the book against destruction. That is the conundrum of the present time.
That gets one to the comedic elements of the President's remarks, understood in the sense I attempted top develop here.
I hope that everyone finally got to enjoy their entire, very delicious beef tenderloins — very special beef. And I want you all to know that Bobby Kennedy, who’s right here, personally ran over the cow in his car. Boom. And he cut it up, and he brought it here for you to eat tonight. So it’s very fresh. And Bobby also suggested an appetizer featuring his favorite cut of male raccoon roadkill. But we drew the line at that, Cheryl. We said, “No, we’re not going to do that. We’re not doing that.” (Transcript: Trump Remarks at White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner)
I divide it into eight possible distinctive categories: (1) insult; (2) hierarchically pointed mockery; (3) the harmless ridiculous; (4) incongruity and absurdity; (5) hyperbole and self-aggrandizing exaggeration; (6) wordplay; (7) comic self-commentary; and (8) the comedy of (near) tragedy. I don't suggest these work--I leave that to critics and readers; but I do suggest they were attempted.
Insult Comedy and the Semiotic Recoding of the Roast Frame. The speech is structured almost entirely around targeted mockery of named individuals—media figures, politicians, and entertainers—delivered inside the ritual frame of a dinner explicitly recognized by its participants as an occasion for reciprocal jesting. This is a direct instance of the Backer-derived semiotic mechanism discussed earlier: statements that would, outside the ritual frame, register as personal attack are recoded as sanctioned play because the audience and speaker share the interpretive code of the "roast" occasion. Examples include the description of Jerry Nadler and Chris Christie "fighting... for a big piece of cheesecake", the mock UFC-style "heavyweight matchups" pairing media and political figures against one another, and the running commentary on Bruce Springsteen's appearance and tour name. The speaker himself repeatedly signals the frame explicitly—"we'll do a little ripping, if you don't mind" and "I'm only kidding"—functioning as the ritual marker that instructs the audience how to decode the insult that follows, precisely the mechanism the semiotic framework identifies as constitutive of the roast genre.
Superiority-Based Mockery (sort of a Platonic Model). Several jokes rely on the straightforward superiority mechanism Plato describes in the Philebus: laughter arising from pointing out another's perceived ignorance, low status, or self-delusion. The characterization of Ilhan Omar's misstatement about "World War Eleven" and the extended treatment of her disputed net-worth disclosure both operate by inviting the audience to laugh at a target's exposed error or contradiction—Plato's account of comic pleasure as tinged with a kind of malice toward those who falsely believe themselves competent or credible.
The Ridiculous as Harmless Defect (sort of an Aristotelian Model). Aristotle's definition of the comic as a defect that causes no serious pain or destruction is tested throughout the speech, since many of the "defects" cited are physical or characterological rather than substantive: the description of a target's "big, fat, ugly head" atop a "pencil neck" and commentary on an unnamed public figure's appearance both aim at physical caricature rather than argument. Whether these instances remain within Aristotle's "harmless" boundary or cross into the genuinely wounding is a judgment the classical framework leaves largely to audience reception and decorum—the same concern Cicero and Quintilian raise about rhetorical wit generally.
Incongruity and Absurdist Juxtaposition. A recurring device is the deliberate collision of a serious or dangerous premise with a trivial or absurd resolution, a structure recognizable as incongruity-based humor. The account of gunfire at a prior event abruptly resolving into "which caused Nicki Minaj to start twerking" exemplifies this: a moment of genuine danger is punctured by a wholly incongruous image. Similarly, the extended narrative about a Secret Service agent being shot juxtaposes genuine peril with a comic coda about the agent's reluctance to seek medical attention. The bulletproof-vest exchange about weight ("they'd rather die than look 20 pounds heavier") likewise derives its humor from placing vanity and mortal danger on the same plane.
Hyperbole and Self-Aggrandizing Exaggeration. Comic hyperbole appears throughout in claims of extreme scale or achievement—425 billion TikTok views, $19.2 trillion in claimed investment, and the assertion that Czech crystal chandeliers might be walked out the door. This device functions less as insult humor than as self-directed comic boasting, a mode with some continuity to the Roman facetiae tradition Cicero catalogues, in which wit built on exaggerated self-presentation is a recognized rhetorical category distinct from wit aimed at another's expense. And the tension between self-consciousness of exaggeration or belief in its ess3enmtial element produces a delightful tension.
Wordplay and Verbal Wit. The speech contains instances of wit based on wording rather than substance—Cicero's and Quintilian's category of verbal (as opposed to substantive) humor—such as the etymological joke about changing the "e" to "u" in "Democrat" while noting that "dumb" itself has a "b", and the deliberate redundancy of "complete and total," glossed as "emphasis".
Meta-Comedic Self-Commentary. Notably, the President repeatedly comments on the mechanics of the jokes themselves rather than simply delivering them—asking "who the hell wrote that line?" after a scripted joke and reflecting explicitly on the risk of sarcasm being taken literally. This self-referential move, drawing attention to the joke as a constructed artifact rather than a spontaneous remark, is consistent with the semiotic point made earlier: it exposes the coding process itself, momentarily making visible the ritual mechanism that ordinarily operates beneath conscious notice during a roast.
Tragic-to-Comic Reversal (a sort of Nietzschean Register). Finally, the speech's opening frames the tragic elements of the attack at the prior dinner and then pivots deliberately toward levity—"the show must go on"—embodying the sort of reversals that have a Nietzschen edge, one in which laughter is positioned as an act of collective affirmation and resilience in the face of what would otherwise register as tragedy, rather than as mockery directed downward at a target.
[PSEUDOLUS]
Something familiar, Something peculiar, Something for everyone: A comedy tonight!
Something appealing, Something appalling, Something for everyone: A comedy tonight!
Nothing with kings, nothing with crowns; Bring on the lovers, liars and clowns!
Old situations, New complications, Nothing portentous or polite; Tragedy tomorrow, Comedy tonight!
Something convulsive, Something repulsive, Something for everyone: A comedy tonight!
Something aesthetic, Something frenetic, Something for everyone: A comedy tonight!
Nothing with gods, nothing with fate; Weighty affairs will just have to wait!
Nothing that's formal, Nothing that's normal, No recitations to recite; Open up the curtain: Comedy Tonight!
Something erratic, Something dramatic, Something for everyone: A comedy tonight!
Frenzy and frolic, Strictly symbolic, Something for everyone: A comedy tonight!
[ALL]
No royal curse, no Trojan horse, And a happy ending, of course! Goodness and badness, Panic is madness-- This time it all turns out all right! Tragedy tomorrow, Comedy tonight!
The Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE) is continuing to accept paper and panel proposals for the 2026 ASCE Annual Conference. Join leading scholars, policymakers, researchers, and professionals in exploring this year's theme, "Cuba at the Precipice of Change?", and contribute to the conversation on Cuba's economic, legal, political, and social future.
New submission deadline: August 1, 2026
Whether you're presenting original research, proposing a panel, or sharing new perspectives, we encourage you to submit your proposal and be part of this important dialogue. Learn more and submit your proposal:https://www.ascecuba.org
Karim A. A. Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, has been removed from his position, the court’s oversight body announced on Friday, after a 20-month-long investigation into allegations that he sexually harassed a subordinate. The decision came down to an assessment that Mr. Khan had committed “serious misconduct” and a breach of duty. The I.C.C.’s Assembly of States Parties, the governing body that brings together its 125 member nations, made the decision during a session in New York on Friday. A substantial majority of its members, 82, voted to remove Mr. Khan, according to an official statement released Friday afternoon in New York. The decision is one that victims’ rights groups and outside watchdogs have been pushing for, but will leave the criminal court searching for leadership at a difficult moment. (New York Times)
Mr. Khan's lawyers of course had a different view:
Mr Karim Khan KC rejects in the strongest terms the decision announced on 8 June 2026 by the Bureau of the Assembly of States Parties of the International Criminal Court. Mr Khan has consistently and unequivocally denied any wrongdoing. Those denials stand. The decision is unlawful, procedurally unfair and unsupported by evidence. It disregards the unanimous conclusion of the independent Judicial Panel appointed by the Bureau itself, which found that the evidence and factual findings by OIOS “did not establish misconduct or breach of duty under the relevant legal framework”. That conclusion should have ended the matter. Instead, an executive and political body has purported to substitute its own assessment for that of the independent judges it appointed. Mr Khan’s legal team will now take all necessary steps to challenge the decision, protect his rights, and ensure that due process is upheld. Further comment will be made in due course. ENDS (here (Mr Khan is represented by Bindmans and Carter-Ruck Solicitors who also stated that further comment might be made in due course))
Al Jazeera, a state owned social media organ reported "The ICC said on Friday that Khan’s office will now be headed by deputy prosecutors Nazhat Shameen Khan and Mame Mandiaye Niang. . . Khan’s accuser, named only as Sarah, recently told CNN that Khan had
shown escalating behaviour of touching and groping her, recounting a
time she said he touched her intimately while she was pretending to be
asleep. Khan has denied any wrongdoing and his lawyers have called
the process that led to the vote procedurally unfair and unsupported by
evidence." (here).
It is possible to understand this process on one level as focused on gender/sex and their power dynamics in organizational settings. That is an old story, though one that never seems to get old. On another, its semiotics is one that focuses on the realities of institutional mandate drift--when it is valued it is supported as contextually evolutionary; when less so as a usurpation of power toward ends that may be perceived as challenging or threatening. On yet another level one encounters here an increasingly kitsch contest over "control" of the interpretive function of regulatory organs and its politics. It is kitsch because of its performative elements--quantification as legitimization strategies, verb choices as connotative framing, naming and anonymization, and a politics of metaphor. And, of course, all of this tends to be "analyzed" ion the current context of contests over the power of outsiders to use the court to advance their own agendas, and by doing so to leverage the court to augment their power and thus leveraged and augmented to project it against their enemies.
I have prepared a simple analysis of some of the issues surrounding the removal of Mr. Khan from the lens of semiotics. Here is the abstract:
This analysis examines the July 2026 removal of ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan by the Assembly of States Parties following a nearly two-year disciplinary process triggered by sexual misconduct allegations from a junior staff member. [1][2] It surveys the competing arguments surrounding the vote and undertakes a semiotic reading of the surrounding discourse. On substance, proponents of removal point to the OIOS investigation's findings and the Bureau's conclusion of "serious breach of duty and serious misconduct", the complainant's public account of non-consensual conduct, and institutional concerns about a functioning office and staff confidence. [3][4][5] Opponents emphasize due-process defects — a judicial panel's contrary finding that was overridden, last-minute procedural changes lowering the removal threshold, and denial of Khan's counsel access to the final session — alongside suspicion that the timing, coinciding with Khan's arrest-warrant applications against Israeli officials and US sanctions against the Court, politicized the process. [6][7] Palestinian and African civil-society bodies notably withheld judgment on the merits while still warning that politicization was corroding the Court's independence. [8][9] The semiotic component identifies recurring discursive mechanisms structuring coverage and commentary: the word "political" operating as a mutual delegitimizing label rather than a neutral descriptor; binary framings (witch hunt/stitch-up versus accountability, due process versus overreach) that import pre-existing cultural scripts — #MeToo institutional-abuse narratives versus lawfare-against-prosecutors narratives — to resolve ambiguous facts; crisis and demolition metaphors ("storm," "total disaster," "brick by brick") that alternately diffuse or concentrate agency; asymmetric naming conventions that preserve Khan's institutional titling while the complainant's designation shifts from anonymized labels to a humanizing pseudonym; quantification (vote counts, signatory totals) deployed as symbols of legitimacy independent of the underlying merits; and verb choice in headlines ("dismissed," "ousted," "removed," "fired") that encodes implicit editorial stances toward the outcome's legitimacy. [10][11][12] The overall conclusion is that a legally technical dispute has become a contested site where opposing narrative frames compete to fix its meaning through vocabulary, metaphor, and naming choices as much as through legal argument. [13] References: 1-2. ICC member states vote to remove chief prosecutor Karim Khan; 3-6, 11. Khan faces historic removal vote as critics warn ICC process has been politicised | Middle East Eye; 7, 13. Before the Assembly: The Removal Vote and the Question of Fitness for Office; 8-9. Over 175 Palestinian and International Organisations Warn that Lack of Due Process and Politicisation in Khan Disciplinary are Corroding the Independence of the ICC; 10, 12. ICC prosecutor steps aside in the storm
My analysis and the full statement of Mr. Khan's lawyers follow below.
The AAUP's Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure and the Committee on College and University Governance just announced release of a report that takes a hard line against the Trump Administration, its principles. objectives and actions as they relate to universities. It is entitled "Extorted Compliance: A Threat to Institutional Autonomy, Academic Freedom, and Shared Governance" (July 2026). The AAUP's media release nicely summarized its text, politics and content:
Today we are releasing a major new report—"Extorted Compliance: A Threat to Institutional Autonomy, Academic Freedom, and Shared Governance"—exposing how the Trump administration has extended its pay-to-play approach to governance into higher education. From Columbia University to Cornell University to Brown University, the report shows that colleges and universities are being forced to pay millions for federal research funding they are already owed.
The report is the first comprehensive account of how the administration has taken the same playbook it's used on law firms and foreign governments and turned it on American universities—pressuring institutions into so-called compliance agreements that strip them of control over admissions, hiring, curriculum, and campus discipline. It also highlights the administration's "Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education," offered first to nine hand-picked universities and then to every college in the country, which the report calls a document that "can be said to summarize the Trump program for higher education."
The findings are blunt: "US higher education has, in effect, become a target of a massive extortion racket."
Prepared by a joint subcommittee of the AAUP's Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure and the Committee on College and University Governance, the report also finds that in dozens of cases, the people who were supposed to stop this type of federal overreach—university boards and administrations—have failed to protect academic independence. Examining the response at Columbia, Harvard, the University of Virginia, and Northwestern, the report finds that most trustees and administrators "have at best been caught flat-footed, and some appear even to have welcomed governmental intrusion." As cases such as the continued fight between administrators and students and faculty at Yale illustrate, the compliance of administrators in these demands for obedience remains a key part of the federal administration’s strategy in forcing universities’ hands.
"These findings spotlight the enormous breadth with which the Trump administration is trying to shake down institutions of higher education," said Henry Reichman, member of the Committee on College and University Governance and the joint subcommittee who prepared the report. "What’s made clear in this report is that the Trump administration's efforts to upend higher education institutions builds upon a larger series of assaults on higher education by congressional committees, state governments, and feckless trustees and entitled donors. The administration’s effort consolidates and intensifies in a single coordinated campaign these disparate assaults on institutional autonomy, academic freedom, and shared governance."
It's the faculty, not the people running these institutions, that the report credits with the only real wins. "If there has been a silver lining to the cloud that is the Trump compliance campaign," the report emphasizes, "it has been the mobilization of the faculty." Litigation led by AAUP's own Harvard University chapter forced Harvard itself to join a suit that restored billions in frozen funding. A parallel effort by the AAUP, the Council of University of California Faculty Associations, and campus unions led a federal judge to bar the government from conditioning further support on new payments. As the report concludes, "Resistance has been, and will be, most effective—indeed, it may only be effective—when faculty members mobilize and take independent action."
Many will agree with some or all of the Report; a few others in the academy maybe not so much. Responses are likely to parallel what has been widely reported as the distribution of political leaning within the university (here, here, and here for instance and in the greater society here), one in which supporters of the Trump Administration generally, and of its policies against universities in particular may be somewhat harder to find. This is not to suggest any view, but rather the political context in which this report emerges. Certainly given the force and persistence of the Trump Administration's effort top rectify higher education for all sorts of reasons that they have made quite public, it ought to come as no surprise that a counter offensive of equal vigor would emerge.
At the core of the debate, as framed in this report is the exercise of state power. The exercise of state was much praised when it was used to advance objectives and suppress conduct and actions that those who supported projections of state power into the academy found good, valuable, useful and in accord with their own beliefs. It seems that state power otherwise used will produce a distinct reaction and a very different framing. This, at any rate might be the way that some who do not share the Committee's politics might be tempted to view the foundation of the Report. This from the opening of the Report:
The Trump administration’s effort differs dramatically from that of previous administrations, however, and not only in its severity and scale. Its aggressively extortionate deal-making, preemptive cutoffs of funding, and cross-departmental enforcement efforts are both novel and largely illegal. Moreover, as the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure wrote, “[T]here is no doubt that the Trump administration has wielded Title VI with the goals of discrediting institutions of higher education, undermining academic freedom and institutional autonomy, and unmooring the Civil Rights Act from its foundational commitments to addressing structures of discrimination that prevent or limit educational access.”4 It is increasingly obvious that the administration seeks to use its compliance agreements to redefine not only its own relationship with higher education institutions but also the very nature of higher education itself. The draft “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” initially circulated by the Department of Education to nine institutions presumably considered open to such appeals and then “offered” to all higher education institutions, suggests that future funding may depend not on conformity to federal law or even administration policy but on loyalty to those in power.5 Hence, this effort by the government consolidates and intensifies in a single coordinated campaign the disparate assaults on institutional autonomy, academic freedom, and shared governance recorded above.
The semiotics of the Report, like its politics is clear. Not necessarily objectionable--that is a values determination, but clear. And ironically the semiotics of the Report is one that is shared by the Trump Administration but in mirror reverse--again grounded in a different values based cognitive starting point for what is good, what is bad and how one can vest text with those values while remaining true to text. Much more interesting is the substantial negative reaction to the fundamental operating and cognitive style of the present administration--its merchant transactional cognitive core--in the context as as a basis for the arguments it makes. The authors who appear to be much more aligned with classical Anglo-European bureaucratic/institutionalist managerial cognitive frameworks find this distressing and suggest it approaches in the context of the Trump Administration's approach to education, extortionate.
Having come to prominence in part for his purported mastery of “the art of the deal,” President Trump has in his second term made deal-making central to governance. This has been evident in his approach to foreign trade, for example, in which he has sought to compel individual countries to bargain over tariff rates, with the United States demanding what it wants from each country separately. * * * As Kim Lane Scheppele writes, “There is no general policy, only particular extortion agreements. And we can expect that the regulation by deal will not end there. * * * It thus is hardly a surprise that Trump has applied a similar approach, centered on large and prestigious research institutions, to higher education.(Report, p. 9).
The rest follows. This makes perfect sense--not in itself, but as evidence of the passions that may be raised when incompatible cognitive systems collide in the presence of power that affects their relative positions within human collectives. And it stands to reason that in the face of fundamental incompatibility each would be tempted to reduce the other to a a flattened fetish; in this case with the suggestion of a connection between the Trump Administration and the habits or characteristics of illiberal authoritarians (see Report, p. 36).
As with all things Americans, this is a preliminary round, and a supplement to, contests for the control of the common language, narratives, and expectations that in the aggregate produce the sort of collective meaning making at the heart of the solidarity project of a polity. Those contests will be decided in some form or another, in (and not ultimately by) the courts it will continue to invoke an even larger contest between these opposing forces--the value of what to some appears to be the increasingly political role of the courts, a concept that has been embraced along virtually the entirety of the political spectrum.
Anyway lots of quite valuable insights, arguments, politics, and facts for the interested reader to consider and decide for themselves. And it may be possible to detach the politics embedded in the Report from its insights respecting the use of state power in the management and control of education, whether or not institutions take public funds with regulatory strings attached.
Again there is much to chew on here, an exercise I leave to readers. The Report's conclusion follows below.
Lema docente:«La IA asiste. Usted piensa. Usted analiza. Usted redacta. Usted asume la responsabilidad».(Slogan para el modelo de regulación del uso de IA en la asignatura, sugerido por ChatGPT).
He venido abordando en diversos escritos los complejos retos que plantea determinar si procede, en qué medida y bajo qué condiciones cabe integrar o restringir el empleo de herramientas de inteligencia artificial (AI Tools —concepto que engloba de forma genérica los modelos de lenguaje de gran escala, redes neuronales y demás sistemas computacionales, generativos o agénticos—) por parte del alumnado en sus trabajos académicos (quedando las encrucijadas del claustro docente para otro debate).
Inicié este itinerario analizando el modo en que las facultades de Derecho en los Estados Unidos han intentado responder a este desafío —calificado así eufemísticamente en medio de la farragosa jerga burocrática del ámbito académico angloamericano contemporáneo— (Borrador de trabajo: «Estructura, opacidad y convergencia: Un análisis consolidado sobre las políticas de inteligencia artificial generativa en evaluaciones y trabajos académicos en Facultades de Derecho» —Descripción y análisis del estado de la cuestión con el auxilio de Harvey AI, primer estudio de una serie sobre IA, Derecho y Educación—).
Posteriormente, cambié de perspectiva y consulté a los propios sistemas computacionales (o al menos a cinco de ellos de matriz estadounidense o angloeuropea: Harvey AI, Claude, Grok, ChatGPT y Gemini) sobre su propia visión del problema —en la medida en que sea lícito trasponer nociones humanas de pensamiento al entorno operacional de un algoritmo— considerando la presencia del factor humano (Cinco máquinas, una pregunta, ningún consenso: Reconsiderando la gobernanza de la IA en la educación jurídica. El guardián, el conciliador, el honesto, el ingeniero y el filósofo sobre el papel de las facultades de Derecho ante la IA). Las respuestas obtenidas no solo resultaron sumamente sugerentes, sino que abrieron la puerta a replantear la inevitable transformación de las nociones analógicas del Derecho y de la docencia jurídica, tradicionalmente ancladas en premisas rígidas sobre la textualidad, la temporalidad y la inmutabilidad de los datos. Dichas vías de reflexión se profundizan actualmente al someter a los sistemas computacionales la relación hombre-máquina dentro del Derecho, descartando el sesgo antropocéntrico para adoptar un enfoque estrictamente sistémico, de lo cual daré cuenta próximamente.
Todo aquel ejercicio resultó ilustrativo e incluso —como suele ponderar el pragmatismo académico anglosajón cuando aborda la solución de problemas— de utilidad inmediata. Sin embargo, no resolvía mi problema perentorio: articular el modo óptimo de integrar, rechazar o conciliar de forma pragmática el uso de herramientas de IA en mis propias clases.
Asumí, por tanto, las pautas institucionales y culturales para aplicarlas rigurosamente a mi contexto particular (nada aviva más el interés académico que personalizar el objeto de estudio). El próximo semestre impartiré una asignatura cuyo sistema de evaluación exige la redacción y presentación de una tesina final articulada en torno a los ejes temáticos del curso: el Derecho Constitucional de los Estados Unidos, con atenciones comparadas a otros ordenamientos. Tomando como base mis estudios previos sobre los modelos estadounidenses y las condiciones reales en que puede desplegarse una normativa de esta índole en una facultad de Derecho, elaboré un primer borrador.
Sometido dicho borrador al dictamen de colegas académicos, el texto reveló la necesidad de sucesivas revisiones (el cauce ordinario para la maduración de estos documentos). En mi condición de titular de la asignatura, asumí la toma de decisiones para transitar desde marcos teóricos abstractos hacia una arquitectura verdaderamente operativa. Finalmente, sometí la última versión consensuada entre docentes a la revisión de un sistema computacional, analizada a la luz de los parámetros de mi estudio sobre las políticas de IA en las facultades de Derecho estadounidenses. Utilicé para ello Harvey AI, dado que la facultad a la que pertenezco suscribió un convenio con sus desarrolladores. El resultado fue de una nitidez implacable: los sistemas informáticos debidamente adiestrados no se andan con contemplaciones con el ego del autor. Consideración que recibí con agrado, pues sirvió para recordar que en la técnica de redacción normativa siempre se es un aprendiz; que la claridad, aun en textos en apariencia nítidos, resulta esquiva; y que a menudo son las zonas de penumbra deliberada las que abren las vías más eficaces para una aplicación equitativa de la norma.
Con estos presupuestos, redacté un modelo de directiva sobre el uso de herramientas de IA para la asignatura. Dicha plantilla se nutrió de seis principios rectores que venía aplicando en años anteriores como régimen por defecto (prohibición absoluta de uso).
El modelo responde a necesidades formativas muy concretas: autorizar el empleo de AI Tools únicamente para dos fines específicos. El primero, la fase preparatoria y de acopio de fuentes previa a la redacción; el segundo, ofrecer un marco de auxilio a aquellos alumnos que piensan y redactan con mayor fluidez en una lengua distinta del inglés, permitiéndoles traducir posteriormente su trabajo para la entrega formal. El alcance de estos permisos puede ampliarse o restringirse según el criterio de cada docente mediante la simple modificación del apartado correspondiente del texto normativo.
A continuación se expone la fundamentación doctrinal de la directiva, seguida del resumen ejecutivo de sus reglas y del texto regulatorio en su integridad. Expreso mi agradecimiento tanto a las personas como a los sistemas informáticos que contribuyeron a perfilar este documento, el cual se concibe como un proyecto en continua evolución que se irá ajustando en función de los datos de su aplicación práctica con el alumnado.
PARTE 2: Fundamentación Doctrinal y Justificación de la Norma
1. Sobre la oportunidad de autorizar el uso de la IA en lugar de disponer su prohibición absoluta
Las herramientas de IA generativa se encuentran integradas en las plataformas de investigación jurídica, en los procesadores de texto y en el ejercicio profesional al que se incorporará el alumnado. Una prohibición categórica resultaría difícil de fiscalizar, desatendería la realidad operativa de la abogacía y desaprovecharía la oportunidad de instruir al estudiante en el uso responsable de estas tecnologías bajo la tutela académica. El régimen general del artículo 1 mantiene la exigencia de que el trabajo sea de autoría propia; el artículo 2 constituye una excepción delimitada y condicionada a dicha regla, no una licencia general de uso. Asimismo, su estructura modular permite al docente adaptar sus parámetros a los objetivos pedagógicos de cada curso.
2. Sobre la restricción de la excepción al trabajo de investigación final
Restringir el uso permitido de la IA a la tesina o trabajo final —prohibiéndolo de forma absoluta en exámenes, casos prácticos y ejercicios de aula— preserva un conjunto de evaluaciones continuas como parámetro objetivo para comprobar si el estudiante es capaz de desarrollar el análisis jurídico por sí mismo. El trabajo final recibe un tratamiento diferenciado por elaborarse a lo largo de un período más dilatado, lo que ofrece márgenes para la verificación transparente mediante apéndices y la tutoría continuada del docente, garantías inviables en una prueba presencial con límite de tiempo. Ello no obsta para que cada profesor pueda ampliar el ámbito de esta excepción dentro de los márgenes previstos por la normativa universitaria.
3. Sobre la preferencia de un catálogo ilustrativo frente a las reglas de trazo grueso (bright-line rules)
Trazar una frontera rígida y mecanicista entre la «asistencia autorizada» y la «sustitución ilegítima» exigiría disgregar la investigación, el análisis y la redacción en fases independientes e insostenibles en la práctica. Semejante pretensión en el trabajo cognoscitivo entraña dos riesgos: (1) generar la falsa confianza en el alumno de que todo lo no prohibido expresamente es legítimo, y (2) producir un efecto paralizador (chilling effect) sobre usos docentes plenamente válidos cercanos a la frontera reglamentaria. Por ello, los apartados i) y ii) del artículo 2.b) se configuran mediante listas ejemplificativas (a título enunciativo, no limitativo), manteniendo cierta flexibilidad interpretativa en los márgenes. Esta penumbra deliberada desanima la búsqueda de resquicios por parte del alumno y atribuye la facultad interpretativa al docente en el marco de las exigencias de su asignatura.
4. Sobre la exigencia de límites cuantitativos estrictos para citas y paráfrasis
El artículo 2.b.iii) reconoce que el material generado por IA puede incorporarse al trabajo como fuente secundaria: mediante cita textual o paráfrasis debidamente acreditada. Ello encauza el contenido sustantivo de la IA bajo las mismas exigencias de atribución aplicables a las fuentes humanas. A diferencia de los catálogos ilustrativos de los apartados i) y ii), esta cláusula impone topes numéricos fijos (máximo de 100 palabras por cita o paráfrasis y un tope del 10 % del cómputo total del trabajo por herramienta) en lugar de emplear fórmulas indeterminadas como «porciones reducidas». Aunque un criterio cualitativo como «reducido» puede funcionar entre profesionales, para el estudiante resulta ambiguo. Un límite numérico exacto aporta certeza previa al alumno y facilita la verificación posterior por parte del profesor.
5. Sobre la obligatoriedad de la transparencia, el apéndice documental y la atribución
Exigir la identificación de cada herramienta, la aportación del historial secuencial de instrucciones (prompts) y respuestas, y la acreditación formal en el texto responde a tres fines:
Crea un registro contemporáneo que permite al profesor auditar el uso efectivo del sistema frente a los estándares de la asignatura.
Consolida la transparencia como una pauta de conducta profesional, en consonancia con las exigencias deontológicas del ejercicio de la abogacía.
Invierte la carga práctica de la prueba: el estudiante que cumple rigurosamente reduce el riesgo de infracción, mientras que quien incurra en un uso no autorizado se enfrenta a un registro documental que dificulta el ocultamiento.
6. Sobre la función disuasoria de la declaración jurada de autoría
La firma de la declaración jurada convierte los deberes de transparencia en una manifestación formal de voluntad. Su falsedad constituye una falta independiente contra la honestidad académica, con sustantividad disciplinaria propia y al margen de la infracción de las reglas de uso.
7. Sobre la consideración del incumplimiento como uso no autorizado
El artículo 2.f) establece que el cumplimiento parcial no exime de responsabilidad. Un sistema basado en la transparencia solo es viable si las obligaciones de documentación se consideran constitutivas de la propia autorización. Permitir la elusión del apéndice o de la declaración sin perder la protección de la excepción desmoronaría la eficacia de la norma.
8. Sobre las potestades de inspección de la institución
El artículo 2.f) faculta a la cátedra y a la Facultad a revisar el apéndice documental de cualquier trabajo, exista o no sospecha previa de infracción. Un esquema basado en auditorías funciona como un elemento de disuasión continua, incentivando la veracidad del registro durante todo el proceso de redacción.
9. Naturaleza del texto como propuesta abierta
La presente plantilla se concibe como una primera aproximación sujeta a verificación empírica. Su diseño está previsto para someterse a prueba en la docencia real y perfeccionarse en función de la experiencia, sin pretender agotar con la mera redacción la resolución de los problemas éticos planteados.
PARTE 3: Síntesis Operativa de las Reglas para el Alumnado y Guía Práctica de Aplicación
A continuación se ofrece una explicación en lenguaje claro sobre la aplicación práctica de la norma en la asignatura. Este resumen parte del supuesto de que la única excepción a la regla general rige para el trabajo de investigación final. No añade obligaciones adicionales a las dispuestas en los artículos 1 a 6 y tiene carácter puramente orientativo:
Regla general: Salvo indicación expresa de la cátedra, todo trabajo evaluable debe ser de autoría propia y exclusiva del estudiante. Este es el presupuesto de partida de la normativa.
Exámenes, casos prácticos y ejercicios de aula: Queda prohibido el uso de herramientas de IA para redactar o modificar estas pruebas, salvo por las herramientas ordinarias de edición e investigación del punto 5 o para la traducción prevista en el punto 4.
Trabajo final de la asignatura: El estudiante podrá emplear herramientas de IA en la preparación de la tesina o trabajo final únicamente si cumple la totalidad de las siguientes condiciones:
Dirección intelectual: El análisis, la argumentación y las conclusiones deben ser de autoría propia. La IA se limita a fases preparatorias (brainstorming, comprobación de citas, sugerencia de contraargumentos y revisión de estilo). Se prohíbe generar análisis sustantivos o texto adoptado con meros retoques cosméticos.
Régimen de citas: Todo texto de la IA incorporado directamente al trabajo se citará como fuente secundaria en nota al pie y bibliografía, sujeto a los límites de 100 palabras por cita y al 10 % de la extensión total del texto.
Identificación: Se consignará el nombre comercial, versión y modo de acceso de cada herramienta.
Apéndice documental: Se adjuntará un anexo con el registro íntegro y ordenado de prompts e instrucciones enviadas y respuestas obtenidas.
Atribución y declaración jurada: Se incluirá la mención de atribución en el texto y se firmará la declaración del artículo 6.b.i.
Efecto del incumplimiento: La inobservancia de cualquiera de estos requisitos invalidará la autorización, estimándose el uso como no permitido.
Traducción de trabajos: Se permite traducir al inglés borradores redactados en otra lengua mediante IA o traductor humano, debiendo declarar el procedimiento, conservar el texto original y firmar la declaración del artículo 6.b.ii. El uso de traductores humanos requiere autorización previa y por escrito de la cátedra.
Herramientas de edición y bases de datos jurídicas: Los correctores ortográficos o gramaticales estándar y las funciones de las bases de datos de jurisprudencia (resúmenes o fichas) son de libre uso y no exigen apéndice documental, siempre que el alumno no copie directamente dichos textos y los redacte de forma autónoma.
Deber de consulta previa: Ante la duda sobre la legitimidad de un uso determinado, el estudiante debe consultar con el profesor antes de entregar la actividad.
Régimen disciplinario: El uso no autorizado de IA podrá ser tramitado como falta contra la honestidad académica conforme al Código de Honor, pudiendo acarrear la reprobación, suspensión o expulsión, así como su comunicación a las autoridades del bar u órganos de colegiación profesional.
TEXTO 4: Normativa Oficial y Directiva de la Cátedra se detalla a continuación
