The Emptiness of Online Education

- The author, Hollis Robbins, is a humanities scholar and dean of arts and humanities at the University of Nevada, Reno. She has written about African American literature and the history of reading. - This piece reflects a long-running debate about online education vs. in-person learning, intensified by the pandemic-era shift to Zoom classrooms and the recent rise of AI tools like ChatGPT, which can write essays and answer questions. - "The Athens of Veracruz" refers to the Mexican city of Orizaba, nicknamed for its cultural and literary heritage — a contrast Robbins draws to highlight what she sees as the hollowing out of genuine intellectual exchange in online settings. - Key background: The essay engages with arguments from tech optimists (who see online learning as expanding access) and critics (who warn it erodes the communal, embodied experience of teaching). Robbins comes down firmly on the side of the critics.