How Vanderbilt University is getting it right - with Chancellor Diermeier
Well before October 7th 2023, we were already witnessing too many examples of the worst in higher education with a lack of diversity of ideas and debate. Numerous U.S. college campuses had become intellectual and ideological monocultures. Then, immediately following October 7th, we saw something much darker, but perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised.
Many of us lament what is happening in higher education. But at CallMeBack, we have also observed some bright spots — universities with inspiring leaders and healthy intellectual climates — and we want to try to understand what is happening at these universities that have bucked the trend.
In this episode, we have a discussion about Vanderbilt University. Our guest is Daniel Diermeier, Vanderbilt University’s ninth chancellor. He previously served in leadership roles at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and at the University of Chicago, where he served as dean of the Harris School of Public Policy.
In addition to his role as chancellor, Diermeier is University Distinguished Professor in the Owen Graduate School of Management and Distinguished University Professor of Political Science in the College of Arts & Science. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Guggenheim Foundation. He has published five books and more than 100 research articles in academic journals.
In our conversation, which was recorded on campus, Chancellor Diermeier discusses how the university has developed its policies around free speech, institutional neutrality, and campus order. In the face of staggering levels of intolerance -- not to mention pro-Hamas protests effectively taking over some campuses -- has Vanderbilt become a model for how to get it right?
The article referenced in this episode - Chancellor Diermeier’s piece in the Wall Street Journal, ‘Free speech Is Alive and Well at Vanderbilt University’ https://www.wsj.com/articles/free-speech-is-alive-and-well-at-vanderbilt-university-023884d1
Additional piece recommended, Chancellor Diermeier in the Wall Street Journal: ‘Scholarly Associations Aren’t Entitled to Their Opinions’ https://www.wsj.com/opinion/scholarly-associations-arent-entitled-to-their-opinions-it-chills-debate-harms-young-faculty-2584c09c?st=LK2G22&reflink=article_imessage_share
Full Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
DD: Institutional neutrality means for us that we will not take a position on political or social issues as a university. Our faculty and our students can. They're encouraged to do so. But our point of view is that universities are platforms. They're there to encourage debate, not to settle it. I would say we have a commitment to civil discourse. We want to treat each other with respect. There's a sense that we want to listen to each other. We want to use arguments. And that is an important part of who we live together and how we learn together and how we do research together.
DS: It's 10 AM on Thursday, November 14th here in Nashville, Tennessee, where I am at Vanderbilt University. It is 11 AM on Thursday, November 14th, In New York City, it is 6 PM in Israel on November 14th, as Israelis are winding down their day. And I'm pleased to welcome to this podcast, for the first time, Daniel Diermeier, the Chancellor of Vanderbilt University, here on your campus, in your home, so to speak. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me. It's good to be with you.
DS: Well, welcome to Vanderbilt and looking forward to the conversation.
DS: Okay, great. There's a lot I want to cover. I guess first, a little bit about you, and then we'll dive into some of the issues that you and I have been talking about over the years. The first is, can you just explain to our listeners, to our viewers, how you wound up here? A little bit about your background and then how Vanderbilt wound up being part of your trajectory.
DD: Great. happy to talk about it. So I was born in Berlin, city was still divided, moved to Munich, was in Germany until I was 23. I'm a first generation student. So actually the first of my family to graduate from high school. And so I got a fellowship from the German government that included a year in the United States. I went to the University of Southern California, was a graduate student in philosophy, PhD program there. That didn't, that wasn't the right thing for me. Went back to Germany when the wall fell. Then got my P.H.D. in the U. S. because I loved being in the United States, wanted to go back, but basically switched fields. And then my first job was at Stanford in the business school. I was at Northwestern for many years. And then I was dean of the public policy school at the University of Chicago provost for four years and then came to Vanderbilt.
DS: Which is where you worked with Bob Zimmer.
DD: Yes, I was a provost under Bob Zimmer for four years.
DS: Right. Who's sort of a giant in academia. And then a minute, just a little bit about Vanderbilt. Obviously rigorously high academic standards, but what I'm most struck about Vanderbilt is when I speak to students at Vanderbilt or graduates of Vanderbilt or their families, there's a sense of students who are stimulated and happy. So, stimulated intellectually and academically, but generally upbeat. It's not a superficial observation, I hope, because at this moment where we are with higher education, when I talk to students at many campuses, and I talk to students at a lot of campuses, I speak at a lot of campuses, there's a sense of heaviness. In some cases, there's a sense of, like, menacing heaviness for what a lot of students are going through. And I talk to students at Vanderbilt, they're like, the sky is blue. And I have a feeling that has something to do, but probably more to do than the fact that the Commodores, the football, uh, football team's record is six and four. They shocked and beat Alabama. We can talk a little about that. That was quite a spectacle. But like, what's going on here that you think is contributing to that upbeatness?
DD: So I would say we are in a phenomenal spot right now. Um, probably like a few, like a month ago, we had the best week in university's history. One of our faculty members was recognized with the MacArthur Genius Award. We had a, one of our alums won the Nobel prize in chemistry. We beat Alabama, which was great. And, you know-
DS: Our listeners should focus on this just for one moment, because for sports fans like me, one of my sons was obsessed with college football and let's just say he, my younger one, he follows LSU, he follows- he's like, dad Vanderbilt beat Alabama. And then he's showing me the images of the storming, the field and taking the goalpost. And it was quite-
DD: It was quite something. I mean, we have not beat- Alabama of course, it's the, you know, giant in college athletics for many years, and we had not beaten them in 40 years. We had never beaten a top five team in our history, and they were ranked top one, number one, and they were there. And so the students ran down on the field, they took down the goalposts, they carried that very heavy piece of hardware through downtown, it was two and a half miles without any property damage. Then they threw it into the river, created a short term shipping hazard. So we pulled it back out and people were just ecstatic. I mean, it was a wonderful moment. For everybody to come together and I think that's something College Athletics really can do.
DS: Yeah.
DD: It can bring a community together.
DS: Right.
DS: The last thing I should say, one of our faculty members was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Jeff Coffin, he is the saxophonist of the Dave Matthews Band, arranger, composer.
DS: Wow.
DD: Really an incredible faculty member. And what that was an expression, I think a manifestation, I think who we are as a university. So the way we think about this is we want every member of our community to realize their full potential. And for the students, that means academically and as people. So we strongly believe in an educational model that helps you grow as a full person. Our residential college model is based around that. It's a little bit kind of IQ plus EQ, and we really focus on that. So that means that we want our students to thrive and we believe, and that's the second pillar that students really develop best, really every member of our community develops best if they're a member of a community that's supportive and challenging. So, when you see around the students are happy, they work hard, and the classes are challenging, but they're part of a community that is supportive. So, if you put all of that together, academically rigorous, kind of a happy campus culture, Nashville is a great place to be. And then you add to that athletics now, you know, being a newly, newly formed, uh, college football powerhouse. It creates an environment for students that is, that they love and it's very attractive.
DS: You should take athletic credit for the, for the thriving. You should say, you know, I really-
DD: I call the plays.
DS: Exactly. You're sitting there with the playbook, you know. All right. So I want to talk about some of the issues you've addressed over the last couple of years, really over the last year. You and I have talked about it a lot since October 7th, but you've been thinking about these issues long before that. You wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal last April about free speech and the role that free speech plays on campus. And before we get into that particular piece, has this been a longstanding priority for you that predated this past year?
DD: Oh yeah, absolutely. And it started certainly during my time at the University of Chicago, which always has been kind of a bastion of free speech. And the way we think about this as Vanderbilt is we want to be very clear about our values. And the values are best thought about as three pillars. Pillar one is free expression. So that is very similar to the Chicago principles, open forums, the broadest freedom for students and our faculty to discuss ideas from a whole variety of different areas and to take these ideas where they lead them. The second piece is what we call institutional neutrality. Institutional neutrality means for us that we will not take a position on political or social issues as a university. Our faculty and our students can, they're encouraged to do so, but our point of view is that universities are platforms, they're there to encourage debate, not to settle it. And the third one, which is particularly typical of the Vanderbilt culture, less typical of University of Chicago, I would say, we have a commitment to civil discourse. And what that means is that we want to remember the remembrance of one community. When they treat each other with respect, there's a sense that we want to listen to each other. We want to use arguments. We're going to use fact based points of view. And that is an important part of who we live together and how we learn together and how we do research together. So when our students arrive on campus or freshmen, they sign a community creed. And that community creed is there's a whole signing ceremony when they do that and the honor code. where they reaffirm those values. So we talk about it all the time. It's an important part of who we are. And then there's a lot of programming around that. We call it Dialogue Vanderbilt. There are small group interactions. There are lots of ways to engage with each other in the residential colleges. There are speaker series. There's a very intentional way to make sure that everybody gets that and knows how to do it. Because one thing that we've noticed is that students are not necessarily prepared from their high schools to be ready for this culture and to thrive from this culture.
DS: It's a big problem, actually.
DD: A hundred percent.
DS: They're not just unprepared, it's the opposite.
DD: That is true. Right. So that's an important part for us, so that they know that this is who we are and they can fully participate in that. And just one example, last August, when we had our new generation, our new group of students coming to campus, I spent an hour and a half, uh, with, um, with the freshmen and kind of edited in two groups where I talked about that we had a conversation with the students. We went to some challenging cases. So everybody knew that I care about it, that the university cares about it, and that is who we are. Our goal right now is to just make this totally part of the culture of the university, in terms of undergrads, graduates, students, faculty, and we made a humongous amount of progress. And I think that's what you pick up when you're on campus.
DS: So, For years, a number of organizations have been sounding the alarm about the lack of free expression on campuses or the constraints on true free expression on campuses, like Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression FIRE, but other groups, too, have been sounding the alarm. So I know what you're doing here. What do you think, generally, because you're a major player in higher education?
DD: Yeah.
DS: In and out of outside of Vanderbilt, what do you think the greatest threats are to free expression on college campuses today in the U.S.?
DD: The problems or the challenges to free expression really go back almost a decade now, and we've seen this in a whole variety of universities. The biggest challenge really is that the, you need to have a culture and a commitment to free expression. And that many, particularly members of the student body, but also some faculty, and then, you know, then there's a broader political environment, are basically trying to put constraints on that. It is very often motivated by people having a particularly very strong point of view on a particular controversial issue. One of my faculty member has a wonderful term for that, she called it the rush to righteousness. It's that people figure out right away, this is the right answer. I don't have to engage anymore because I've figured it out and then it becomes kind of a moral question because I got it, you don't have it, and now it becomes kind of an arm wrestling match. And that has led to disruptions. It leads to kind of shouting down of speakers. I mean, there are many, many examples of that. And it's very, very important that this, these threats to free expression and free speech on campus are recognized and then we need to have a clear point of view and policies that support that. So I just want to give you one example of that. You heard already about what we're doing in terms of development for the students and so that they understand that it's an education component, but you also need to have policies and processes in place. So, on the free speech side, you know, one of the challenges are outside speakers, controversial speakers. And, now you have to question and ask yourself, how do you do that?
DS: I'm a speaker today. I hope, I hope I'm not a controversial one. I am an outside speaker.
DD: You're an outside speaker, right? And so, we have a lot of people on campus. We had, This was in a classroom setting. We had Mitch McConnell last week and two weeks earlier we had Nancy Pelosi. You know, we had Michael Knowles last year. We have Ben Shapiro coming next week. I mean, these are people that usually create some kind of controversy on campus. But our point of view is. Any registered student organization and any faculty member can bring to campus whoever they want. They just need to coordinate with us on like where and when and so forth. That has been our tradition since the 60s. We go back to the 60s on that. So in the 60s we had student led event called the Impact Symposium had at the time Storm Thurman and Stokely Carmichael on campus, which was at the time, of course, created a lot of controversy. So that's how we do it. And of course, then you have somebody on campus that, that creates these challenges and then immediately you got outrage. But you have to ask yourself, how do you do it? So that's our model. Our students have the freedom to do this. Model two, you have no outside speakers. Even in a classroom setting, you know, people get upset by this or the other. That's not good. Or you have a committee where everybody has to be vetted. And you can imagine what that looks like. So I think it's important that we always understand how do we operationalize and then how does it tie back to our values and then act accordingly.
DS: Institutional neutrality, which you alluded to earlier and you've written a lot about. What's your case to other universities as to why institutional neutrality is the only way to go, especially in the environment we're in today?
DD: Yeah. So institutional neutrality is a concept that many universities struggle with. And until very recently, it was really among the major universities, was University of Chicago, us, and University of North Carolina that had a commitment to it. What we've seen now over the summer and early fall, there's a whole list of universities that have now made some type of commitment to institutional neutrality. Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Penn, a whole variety of them. We can go a little bit deeper into that. My sense is they're not, they're not all the way there, and they should go further. Uh, but let me tell you about the concept first. So the concept basically, we had it at Vanderbilt, again 60s, early 70s. Chicago. Had it also, it was codified in the late 60s, 1967 in the Calvin Report. And what the Calvin Report fundamentally says is, On issues that are core to the university, its mission of generating and transmitting knowledge, pathfinding research, transformative education, universities have values and have a purpose. On those types of things, there should be advocates, there should be forceful, for example, protection of free speech. On other issues that are outside of that scope, for example, foreign policy, universities should be silent. They should not have a position whatsoever. Why? Because you want to have the broadest freedom for faculty and students to engage with these issues without having to worry about a party line. So the classic argument for institutional neutrality is what's called the chilling effect. Okay, so if there's an official party line, faculty and students are less likely to engage with a particular topic. So if we're taking a position on Israel or pro Palestinian position or on abortion, another example, you know, the Dobbs decision, we are chilling the type of debate and discussions that can go on. That's the first argument. The second argument, which I don't think is fully appreciated, is that if you are not committed to institutional neutrality, and if you have chosen to take positions on this, or that, or the other, you are encouraging politicization on campus because now there's something at stake for various groups to lobby you, to pressure you, and it just creates this ongoing drama. And I think one of the things that we've seen on campus recently was really that. The third thing, I think the third reason is it undermines our reverence, our commitment to expertise. If I, over the weekend, make a statement condemning the Supreme Court over the Dobbs decision, I have faculty members who spent their entire life on the constitutionality of Roe v. Wade that really understand the subtleties, understand maybe the public policy or public health context, or they're coming about it from a kind of ethical or religious point of view. And so that's their career. That's the expertise. That's what we value. And the idea that I can do this over the weekend and just say, well, that's the right answer is preposterous. So universities need to be committed to that. I think that is clearly follows from their mission. However, what we're seeing now, and I think that's really a consequence of what happened after October 7th on campuses. Universities are moving in that direction, but not all the way. So let me take you as an example as Harvard. So Harvard, uh, had a faculty report now, and I've written about this too, uh, in the Wall Street Journal, where they said, Okay, the president will no longer take, will refrain from taking positions. But the real issue in many cases is not only about position taking with speaking, but about what you do. So of course the demands from many of the pro Palestinian groups was to divest from companies related to Israel. That's not just about speech. That's about action. That's about how do you think about the endowment. How do you think about your vendor relationships. How do you think about what you do academically as well. So it's very important that universities don't just stop in terms of speeches, but they go all the way so that everything that they do is consistent with their mission and with institutional neutrality. Don't use the endowment for political purposes. Don't select vendors on whether they have a particular political orientation. And then crucially, it needs not only to be at the level of the president and provost, the university level, but it needs to apply to departments, schools, and so forth. Always driven by the same values. Right? No chilling effect, have broad variety of points of view on campus, and create a platform for where they can thrive.
DS: In the state of Tennessee, it's state law that you can't cooperate with a BDS campaign or BDS efforts. So can you just spend a minute explaining that, because that's just the reality that I think you probably turn to your faculty, your students, whoever, and say, A, it's not our policy, and B, it's actually illegal.
DD: Yes. This was an important subtlety or complication in the case. So the state of Tennessee, as a variety of other states in the United States, have restrictions of participating in boycotts against allies of the United States. That's the way it's framed. Now that is if you're in violation of the state law, research support from the state, which is important for us, particularly in areas of education, transportation, and so forth, it would be at risk and you have to affirm that every year. So it's not, it's not that they do an investigation and you have to actually affirm that they need not engaging in that and to be eligible for state funding. So the issue was that our student government wanted to vote on a resolution that would allow them to use their funding only for companies that did not have a tie to Israel. So basically utilize their funds towards participating in a boycott against companies with ties to Israel. And, you know, and that's an issue, you know, in a variety of different universities. So we said, no, we can't have that. And we're not allowing a vote either. Because the funds that are utilized, they're university funds, they're assigned to the students to use for the purposes of student government, but they're university funds. So what you do with your own money, that's your business, but university funds cannot be used for this purpose, and therefore, we're not gonna do it. And that's consistent with state law. That was our interpretation of state law. And we did a very careful analysis of that. Because the state doesn't distinguish between the student government for the state. These are our funds and the student governments are part of the university. Hence, we would be in violation of state law. So, that was a little wrinkle on that. That made it even, I think, even clearer.
DS: Your case even stronger, right?
DD: My case even stronger. And, you know, we did talk about it. But the most important thing for us is what our values are. Why do we have the values and how do we enforce them? And one thing that I should say on that, the student disciplinary process is a really important component to that. I think that what we see now, which is somewhat distressing, is that at some universities, even though students kind of engaged in breaking into buildings, threatening people, there's no disciplinary consequences. So the important thing is an announcement or statement of principles is great. But now you need to operationalize it. So you need to have clear policies about who can invite speakers, how that's done to make sure that various groups have to have access, fair access to spaces, and then if there are rule violations, what's your disciplinary process? So all these things need to work together, and then the most important thing is that we constantly talk about it And it becomes part of what we do every day. So, the day before the election, we had a debate between the college Democrats and the college Republicans on campus, which is not possible at most campuses right now. So we had the president of the college Democrats, president of the college Republicans, had a debate format structured, moderated by another student. We had about 150 students in the audience. The topics were immigration, abortion, and the size of the federal bureaucracy. Everything was done civil. They had their positions. They argued for it. It was a proud moment for us. This is what we want to do, but it's the consequence of working at it. Can't be done by decree. You have to work on it. It has to be clear. Those are the values. Then you have to have programming in place so that everybody understands. This is who we are because it's connected to our core value and because that's what we believe is an essential component of a transformative education.
DS: Yeah, and the issues, by the way, that were selected are not like the size of federal bureaucracy can be a little more analytical, but the issue of abortion and immigration, these are emotional issues.
DD: Absolutely. And that is an important part of an education, is that you will feel strongly about it. You may feel emotional about it, but you now need to remember that you're members of one community and you treat each other with respect.
DS: Another reminder that this place, I think, is increasingly a model for what many of us should hope for in terms of the direction of higher education in this country. So, the corollary to that is, and I say this as someone who's, my politics, my philosophical worldview tends to be right of center. And I am very sensitive to what I've seen on campuses, which is just lack of viewpoint, diversity, the suppression. I'm not saying the ideas on campuses should all be right of center. It's the last thing I want students to be exposed to. I want them to be exposed to a diversity of views, which can only ultimately come from instructors on the campus who have a range of views. And I feel like more and more universities are waking up to this being a real problem. The sort of monoculture is of, ideology of political philosophy of geopolitical outlook is unhealthy for the campus environment for a number of the reasons you're saying. So then their approach is, we're going to kind of do affirmative action for conservatives. So we're going to have like a box checking exercise to hire conservative instructors so students, so we can say that our students have exposure. So then you get classes like, a friend of mine's daughter at Tufts, I'm not picking on Tufts, it's just in my mind, they literally had a class on conservative ideas or conservative politics, meaning like, to understand the conservative movement, take this class as though it were like a foreign thing, it was like a crime beat, you know, like, you're gonna go study the conservative movement as though, and in fact, and the person who taught it wasn't conservative, they were, isn't this an interesting phenomenon, these people they call conservatives, let's, so how do you deal with the viewpoint diversity, because at the end of the day, it's about the diversity of the instructors. The professors on campus, and again, not treating it like, oh, we're just going to hire a couple and we'll be done.
DD: This is an important and complicated question. So the first thing that I would say is the job, the responsibility of our faculty members is not to use the classroom for political propaganda or for political advocacy. That is not what they're supposed to do. And it's very important that this is perfectly fine with, with the way we think about academic freedom. That is a longstanding tradition. That's particularly true if it has absolutely nothing to do with the subject matter. So the number one goal of the faculty is to create an environment that is educational. And if that is not happening, and we're drifting into other areas, we have a problem from the point of view of professionalism, of what it means to be an educator. So that's number one. The second comment is, it's true that when you look at, uh, you know, there's some empirical studies on like kind of the political leanings of the faculty. They are, most of them are on the left side of the political spectrum that I think is, if you look at like things like campaign contribution, and it varies a little bit, but it's overwhelmingly the case. Now, most of the things that we teach on campus, of course, there is no political content whatsoever in the classroom. I mean, if you do a biochemistry class, it's just not relevant where you give your campaign contributions.
DS: Right.
DD: Where this becomes an issue, I would say, are the areas of the university where, if you will, society reflects upon itself. So that is parts of the humanities, history, law schools, social sciences, political theory, those type of areas. It is absolutely essential that in this environment, the students understand the different point of views. I mean, if you take a class on theories of justice, you need to have different points of view on that. It cannot be an intellectual monoculture. That is awful. And so now the question is, how do you do that? Right? I think this whole like kind of affirmative action, one side or the other is very problematic or like you called it the crime beat, but we need to make sure that these positions are authentically present and represented in the classroom. That's the key. Now, That may be done by a faculty member who is a conservative, who brings that point of view, or by faculty member that, that are able to do in a whole variety of different ways. So the key to me is the outcome. How do you make sure that these positions are, they get voiced in the classroom, that the students are not afraid to take on these positions and explore them and investigate them, and then the faculty member doesn't come in with a sense, well, that's kind of weird over there, but we have to talk about it anyway. That's not good. That is not a good educational experience. So, now exactly how do you do that? I think it's complicated and varies from field to field. I think in a law school, for example, that it's really important that you have a representation, a good representation of conservative legal scholars, because that's where a lot of the action is, particularly when it comes to constitutional law. So, you need to have some of that. In other areas, it may be less important. So, it's really, to me, a question about how do we fulfill our purpose, and then field by field, what are the right strategies to get there.
DS: Okay, so I want to look at this past year and basically last spring when campuses across the country were dealing with these anti Israel encampments that took over many campuses. And there was a range of responses of universities. Maybe on one end I would point to Dartmouth, our mutual friend, who leads Dartmouth, where the leadership of Dartmouth really clamped down in a hard headed, I thought, appropriate way on the encampment. They called in the Hanover police. They, you know, there were arrests. Then on the other end of the spectrum, a school you taught at, Northwestern, or worked at, where they negotiated with the encampment and basically legitimized the encampment and the encampment community, if you will, as a stakeholder.
DD: Yes.
DS: That was to be dealt with and like reach, enter into some kind of like bilateral negotiation with. So, where did Vanderbilt settle on that spectrum and just any observations or lessons you can share from that time?
DD: So let me tell you what happened and how we handled it and then I'll give you my interpretation of it and how it fits with the other universities. So the first thing is these, the values that I talked about, free expression, institutional neutrality, civil discourse, were clearly communicated to the campus community already in May. Inaugural speech, but throughout my tenure, and we really did a lot of education programming around it. So it was clear to people what we stood for. That's not to be underestimated. After October 7th, our students did phenomenal. We had vigils, we had conversations in the classroom, outside of the classroom. I was extremely proud of how we've handled that. I would say the first half year. Then, towards the end of the year, in December, we saw the emergence of a more radical pro Palestinian student movement. It's fairly small. I mean, our campus culture is different from, you know, let's say a Columbia or Berkeley.
DS: Just on that, when it emerged, did it surprise you? Did it catch you off guard? Did you know that there were kernels of this?
DD: No, it didn't surprise me. I was seeing this at, you know, multiple universities. It was, you know, wasn't that a huge amount of students, but it was a pro Palestinian position that you would see at many other campuses as well. So they were asking us to cut relationships with vendors that had ties to Israel and divest from our investment, from our endowment. So a classic BDS type position, boycott divestment sanctions, you know, that we have seen for many years. And that of course took front and center in this, in this context. So in early January, then when students came back to campus in my welcome back message, I made it clear, this is not consistent with our values. So we are committed to institutional neutrality. You can talk about that, you can have these debates, we can have protests and so forth, but they need to be respectful and we will not take a position on this. We will not divest from Israeli companies or companies with ties to Israel. The same is true for our vendors. That's our values, has been our values for a long time. Second, a reminder that for people to engage in civil discourse. And what then happened was the group kind of responded and said, we don't believe that, you know, institutional neutrality shouldn't apply here, it's too important. And we also don't feel we're bound by civil discourse, which is customarily interesting. Didn't quite know what that meant, even though they had signed it, you know, when they joined on campus. So what we then found out is, uh, in late March, what they meant by that. So they occupied the central building.
DS: The building we're in right now.
DD: The building we're in right now, Crookston Hall.
DS: Crookston Hall, the belly of the beast, the lion's den.
DD: Right here. And basically Crookston Hall had been gut level renovated and there was still a couple of little like, there's still some stuff that needs to be fixed. So the building is not open for the public. At any rate, they kind of under false pretenses, you know, pretended that they had an appointment. Then they're kind of, they're rushed into the building, they're pushed a security guard against the doorframe. He was injured. They ran right, kind of pushed him aside and then tried to occupy my office, which was two levels or one level up.
DS: Were you in the office?
DD: No, I was not in the office. I came a little bit later. They tried to push themselves and pushed one of my, my chief of staff. They were prevented from doing that. They closed the doors. And then they're basically sat in front of my office in the foyer, if you will. So that was around 9:00 in the morning. It was absolutely clear that it was a violation of university's rules. It was a form of trespassing. And of course, we do not injure each other. So there was no question about that this was a violation of university rules. What we would do in such a case is then people go through the student disciplinary process. So we told the students is that that's what's going to happen. They would have to leave the building, there was no food, there was no bathroom access. And around at 4am, we were able, in the evening, we were able to get a warrant from the municipality. We arrested three students that had pushed a security guard in there. Everybody else was told that they need to leave now, they can leave voluntarily, but they would be subject to student discipline, which we had repeated throughout the day. So at that point, students left. We had the students arrested. They are right now facing trial later this month on the charges of, um, assault. So that's that part. We went through student, student discipline. They were suspended immediately. That takes about three to four weeks until the process is done. Every student goes to their own process, and we expelled three students and there were some suspensions and some probations. Long probations. And then what I did is that I decided that I would write a piece on that. That was the op ed in the Wall Street Journal you were mentioning. Which we'll post in the show notes. And I just explained what we were doing. You know, those are the rules. Those are the values. And you have to be willing to stick with them. So we were very clear that because we had a commitment to institutional neutrality, we would not use the endowment. For political purposes, so we're not going to negotiate over that. That was clear, and we're not, we're not negotiating over our values.
DD: But, you had some professors, some members of the faculty, who thought you went too far in expelling those students, and that they were ultimately overzealously expressing their viewpoint, their right to free speech, and it was one thing to rein it in, it's another thing to expel them.
DD: Yes.
DS: And that you went too far.
DD: Yes.
DS: And your response to those professors is or was what?
DD: Well, we, so we had a small group of professors, maybe 30 total, that were sympathetic to the demands at the beginning, you know, so we had that, we had a letter that supported that. After the occupation happened, there was a letter with more signatures that basically said just like, that we were too harsh. And that we should treat it differently and so forth. So, the way we handle this is we have a very, very robust, very well developed student discipline process. And I'm not part of that process. So, that is handled through our student affairs area, the Dean of Students. They have people that follow the rules. They always apply the same standards. So, if they're at a fight at a fraternity, they go to student discipline. And if they're okay, they then go to student discipline. So, whatever violation of student conduct is, is handled by that. They came back, that was their finding, and then we have an appeals process over the summer, but it's a rigorous appeals process, you have grounds for appeals and all the sanctions were upheld. So, that was that. I'm not intervening with that, that's the appeals process, that was the disciplinary process so, and then, you know, we had a discussion in the Faculty Senate on that, where people had good questions, I think appropriately appropriate, we explained what happened, that's kind of the end of it.
DS: And the policy now on, say, encampments?
DD: Yes. So, we had a small encampment. maybe like 10 tents or something in front of Kirkland Hall. And, uh, we didn't have an encampment policy. So we didn't have a camping policy, if you will. It wasn't just about encampments. We didn't have one. And so because it was not a policy violation, we talked to the students and we basically said, okay, but you have to conduct yourselves appropriately. You can't harass anybody. You can't occupy buildings, anything like that. And they did that. They had their encampment. They were, everything was fine. And then. When students leave campus, right before graduation, we told them now we have to pack up and they packed up. So that was that. We now, as you know, like many universities, we looked, you know, where were the gaps? How did we do this? We have a commitment at Vanderbilt. We always do an after action review. We always want to see what worked and what didn't work. So we did that too. And our sense was that even though the students behaved just fine during this encampments, encampments are problematic. And they're problematic, obviously, when there's misconduct like harassment or people blocking people from entrances, that's one thing. But encampments are problematic by themselves. And the reason is that what we do whenever we have demonstrations on campus, there is that we go through a process. There's time, place, and manner restrictions. What they're about is to ensure that different groups have equal access to a space. And there are symbolically important places on every campus. So right before the occupation of Kirkland Hall, a week earlier, we had on Alumni Lawn, which is an important part on campus, a pro Israeli, pro Palestinian group. One had a wall with images of the hostages, the other of like, uh, Gazans, uh, civilians being killed. They made their case, fine. But when you occupy a space, you're denying the other group access. And we don't think that's appropriate.
DS: So it's physically disruptive.
DD: You're saying this is my space and you don't have a right to it. And that's inappropriate, given our commitment to free speech and neutrality.
DS: I take your point about the protection of free speech so long as it doesn't disrupt students ability to live their lives on campus and go about their academic business. But there are some expressions that you can imagine, some statements, that are shocking. It's not just, oh, Ben Shapiro or Mitch McConnell or Nancy Pelosi, you know, this one offends that one, this, this person. At some campuses, for instance, you had protests, obviously not this one, where they would shout at Jewish students, go back to Europe, go back to Poland, or chants singing, bomb Tel Aviv. Or there's a famous image from Columbia where there was a student saying, calling out the Qassam brigades, one of the military wings of Hamas, pointing to Jewish students on campus and holding up a sign that said Qassam, your next target like holding up a sign saying basically kill those students or they take the inverted red triangle which is what Hamas uses to sort of identify its next target and there were protesters on some campuses that were using the inverted red Triangle to put on images of Jewish students or at Jewish student events. At some point, do you say that's not free expression? It crosses a line because that's inflammatory to the point of incitement.
DD: So the way we think about this is we are very broad. If the context or the setting is, you know, appropriate and it does, it's an event or anything like that. We really are committed to open forums. So I'll give you one example and I'll come back to your cases. So, I think it was like late October, early November, we had, you know, Michael Knowles on campus was invited by the Young Americans for Freedom. And the title of his talk, this was, this was a year ago, was In Praise of Settler Colonialism. That was the title of the talk. And then he said something very, you know, which many students thought was very offensive to trans students. Right, you know, the first ten minutes to kind of get things going. And, you know, there was a little like shouting and stuff like that, but there was no disruption. And so a lot of our students were very upset about that. So we had a discussion about, about how we think about speakers, what they can say. As I said before, student groups can bring wherever they see fit on campus, even if they are, you know, they are upsetting to other students. And even if they say things that are not, that are not consistent, how we think about as members of the community, that's our free speech component. Where things get problematic is when those type of speeches constitute a sense of harassment, intimidation, threats. And the way we think about that is really, that's part of our regulatory environment as an educational institution. So we're subject to Title VI, which basically is our responsibility to make sure that our students can participate fully in the educational experience without harassment, without discrimination. So when we have a case like that, What would happen is a member of the community would file a complaint, and then we'll review the complaint, whether it is constitutes, harassment, discrimination, threats, those type of things, and that's investigated. And then if there is a violation of, you know, of equal opportunity, that's the real legal framework, we take appropriate action. And it may be, you know, whatever the specific aspect of the conduct was, but we look at one conduct at a time and every member of our community, we want to make sure that they feel treated fairly, but also that the complaints are treated appropriately. So it becomes that process has worked very well. You know, we had a bunch of complaints last year that along those lines. Uh, they were handled appropriately, and I think that's the way to do it, because I think you have to be very careful that, on the one hand, you're consistent with Title VI, creating an environment where the students can thrive, while also making sure that this whole idea of open forum is in place and is sustained.
DS: Okay. We were introduced by a mutual friend.
DD: Yes.
DS: Who said you needed some help. You were taking a trip to Israel.
DD: Yes.
DS: This is in the summer of ‘23. I was with you at a conference soon after that in Europe, but you had already gone to Israel in the summer of ‘23. And I think it was with a Vanderbilt group or team or Vanderbilt delegation.
DD: Yes.
DD: And I was struck by what the focus was of the trip.
DD: Yeah.
DS: Because you described the goal, which I was going to help with, which was Israel as a model of an ecosystem that was relevant to Vanderbilt specifically. And I guess Nashville more generally. So can you talk a little bit about why Israel was important in that context and what you learned from it?
DD: Yes. So. Well, it's the summer of ‘23. It feels like a different world.
DS: I know, I know. It feels like a different world.
DD: It feels like it. I mean, it's so we are very actively engaged in, um, thinking through and working with the mayor's office and the community about enhancing Nashville's innovation economy. That's really important for us, there's a lot of dynamics on that, universities play an important role. So what we did is we went to both the United States and then to Europe and then to Israel to look at different innovation ecosystems. And what we, and what we wanted to understand is what makes them work. And of course I had read Startup Nation. So like, uh, that was, that was very influential and I thought it was very insightful. And that's, I think that's how we, how we got connected originally. And we learned a lot and we learned a lot. We went to different places. We went to Barcelona and to London to see what they're doing. And I wanted to go to Tel Aviv. And I had heard, in part motivated by reading your book, the, how successful Tel Aviv and Israel overall as an ecosystem was, and I was very impressed by what they, what was happening there. The lessons that I learned, which was, those lessons were informed by all these conversations that, how crucial the collaboration between universities and the community is, that you need to have permeability, that there is something also about being a destination. So that this is a place, comes back to original conversation, is that it's a place where people want to be, that there are restaurants, that there's cultural life. And that was important, which Nashville of course has. And then the third piece, which I learned more about, is like the role of the government. And that is something I think where the Israeli government played a very important role in de-risking that for outside investors. And so we learned a lot. I mean, we had lots of conversations there. We had conversations all across Europe, but, uh, that was, was the last stop on our trip. And we're in, you know, we're sitting there and, uh, understanding about what makes the various different components work. Of course, now it's a different world with different challenges. It was something where I think we could really see how particular Tel Aviv, but the Israeli innovation economy works.
DS: Daniel, thank you for your time, for your, for your thoughtfulness, for your sanity, because so much in higher education these days seems insane. So, Chancellor Diermeier, thank you for hosting me and thank you for taking the time for this conversation.
DD: Well, thank you for having me on the podcast. Really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you.
DS: That's our show for today. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. Our media manager is Rebecca Strom. Research by Gabe Silverstein. Additional editing by Martin Huergo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.