Angelo Villagomez

The stories told on public lands and waters and the names given to these places reflect America’s values and self-identity. Telling the real stories of all Americans is patriotic and critical to maintaining democracy. A balanced portrayal of American history helps to cultivate informed and engaged citizens, understand the present, and prevent future atrocities. It is a form of democratic self-defense. But when democracies allow historical distortions to take root, it leads to the creation of nationalist myths that extremists can exploit. For much of American history, the roles of certain communities in national stories were suppressed and ignored even as they faced extreme acts of violence and discrimination. As a result, attempts to tell an accurate history of America are often incomplete and one-sided. But there has been progress. During the 20th century, the advances in equity for women, Native Americans, Black Americans, immigrants, and others extended to many aspects of life...

I did not write this essay.  I recorded myself giving an hour long lecture at Cornell this week and loaded the transcript into ChatGPT and asked it to highlight the main arguments and recommendations from my talk. If you attended my talk, I think you would agree this is an accurate encapsulation of what I said. When I was a college student we took an honor pledge, that the work we submitted was our own.  These are my words and ideas, but they are rearranged by a computer.  I can't even begin to imagine how professors and colleges are dealing with the rise of AI in the classroom, and the nuances of what is ethical and allowed. I was reading Kamala Harris' book 107 Days this week, and in it she talks about how lawyers joke about the argument they wanted to make, the argument they made, and the argument they should have made.  The same is true of my Cornell talk.  There was the talk I planned to make, the talk I made, and the talk I should have made.  I'm givi...