Workshop and Webinar Series
WAC Speaker Series
Writing to Discern: Naming What We Value in the Age of GenAI
Discussions of generative artificial intelligence (genAI) often gravitate towards
one of two poles: praise of technological progress or a critical refusal based on
concerns about injustice and harm. However, most faculty find themselves somewhere
in the middle, seeing both potential benefits and real risks in the technology. This
middle space can be generative for ethical discernment.
In this presentation, Dr. Christopher Basgier will outline a practice of writing to discern, grounded in pragmatist ethical philosophy. The practice centers on writing about values (personal,
disciplinary, and social) and reflecting on how genAI advances, disrupts, or changes
values when used in local contexts, from classrooms to lab groups to professional
settings. This practice of writing to discern is adaptable across disciplinary contexts,
and it can facilitate open discussion about our commitments and the tradeoffs we are
willing to make when we engage in situated use and situated refusal of genAI.
Christopher Basgier is Director of University Writing at Auburn University, which
won the 2025 Exemplary Enduring WAC Program Award. As Director, he consults with departments
about integrating writing throughout undergraduate and graduate curricula in support
of critical thinking and wellbeing. His research, which spans writing across the curriculum,
writing centers, genre, threshold concepts, and digital rhetoric, has appeared in
venues like Across the Disciplines, College Composition and Communication, Composition Forum, Praxis, Prompt, Studies in Higher Education, The WAC Journal, and The Writing Center Journal. He is active in national organizations like the Association for Writing Across the
Curriculum and the Conference on College Composition and Communication, and he serves
as Associate Publisher for Operations and Equity with the WAC Clearinghouse.
Co-Sponsored by the Department of English and World Languages
Thursday, February 19, 2026
6:00pm - 7:30pm EST
Zoom
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