A pro-Palestinian student group at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee demanded that the school denounce, divest from, and cut any connections to Israel in December—to which Chancellor Daniel Diermeier promptly responded, “No.”
“I sent a letter [saying] that those demands are inconsistent with institutional neutrality,” Diermeier said, as he recalled the incident during an Oct. 22 panel discussion assembled by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni in Washington.
Several weeks after his denial of the demands, 27 students stormed the front entrance of the Vanderbilt administration building, injuring a security guard. They went upstairs and attempted to enter Diermeier’s office, only to find the door locked. So they sat down in the hallways and refused to leave. Then they asked for food and access to nearby restrooms, which were unavailable because of renovations at the time, the chancellor said.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Diermeier said he told the students. “And we don’t have a moral duty to provide you with pizza.”
Following the brief episode, three students were criminally charged and expelled, and several others were suspended or placed on campus probation.
In the wake of pro-Palestinian student protests on campuses across the country after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, Diermeier said Vanderbilt took action accordingly, “but that’s not the norm.”
He said Vanderbilt, since the 1960s, has maintained three pillars of free expression.
The first is an open forum, which states that students or faculty can bring in any guest speakers, no matter how controversial, to campus. The second, civil discourse, requires students to sign a community creed pledge to treat one another with respect and base arguments on facts and reasoning. Pillar three, institutional neutrality, affirms that Vanderbilt, as an institution, will not take a stance on political or social issues other than economic freedom.
“The purpose of the university is to encourage debate,” he said, “not settle it.”
At a time when the nation is so polarized and leaders of top universities have been criticized for failing to denounce campus anti-Semitism, Diermeier is calling on all U.S. higher learning institutions to adopt the same policy of neutrality.
He said every institution should pass down that policy to every academic major or program. He’s also asking scholarly organizations made up of professors in both the humanities and STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and math) to do the same.
“A variety of them routinely take positions on political issues totally unrelated to their purpose,” Diermeier said.
American Council of Trustees and Alumni President Michael Poliakoff said he is disappointed that not only students but also college and university faculty members are increasingly supporting anti-Israel ideologies at a time when public confidence in higher education is declining. The indoctrination of students instead of the provision of an objective education had already been a problem on U.S. campuses for decades, he said.
“Students indicate that they have to agree with the professor in order to get a passing grade,” Poliakoff said at the panel. “That’s a disgrace.”
Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, former president of George Washington University, said college presidents’ authority has eroded over the past three decades. Students and faculty members who encourage protests are afforded protections, but administrators are held accountable if events spiral out of control.
Diermeier said higher education leaders need to have a better understanding of the legal ramifications of the First Amendment in higher learning institutions.
Private colleges and universities are not considered public spaces, and with either public or private schools, constitutional rights are evaluated within the purpose of education, where campuses are required to protect students and employees from harassment.
Diermeier said students who denounce another nation and another religion while destroying property and shielding their identity should not equate their actions to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and are engaging in more than just civil disobedience.
“This is a moment, as university leaders, we have to step up,” Diermeier said. “Let’s not forget—American universities are the envy of the world.”
