Under Surveillance: Campus Protest, Generative AI, and the Erosion of Student Expressive Agency

Abstract This article explores the interconnectedness of two significant events at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in spring 2024: the university's adoption and promotion of Microsoft's generative AI program, Copilot, and the aggressive police response to a peaceful pro-Palestinian protest. Taking student writing as a locus of power, the article begins with an examination of the ways surveillant technologies such as Turnitin and Honorlock foster an institutional climate that normalizes security interventions in campus spaces, then pivots to an exploration of how universities’ recent investments in generative AI technologies impose subtle yet significant constraints on the diversity and agency of student critical inquiry and creative expression. Viewed collectively, AI plagiarism detection software, remote proctoring systems, and chatbots construct an institutional climate that normalizes both technological and physical interventions against student expression. Drawing on theoretical frameworks of Paolo Freire and political philosopher Annette Zimmermann, it becomes clear that generative AI, implemented in haste and with little or no student input, often functions to reinforce surveillant power structures, enacting a form of linguistic violence by alienating students from authentic and ethical decision-making processes in their intellectual work. This rhetorical regulation, or constraint of student communicative agency, challenges fundamental principles of universities as spaces for critical inquiry and creative expression.