Daniel Diermeier
Subject: Expelling Students Who Misbehave
Bio: Chancellor of Vanderbilt University
Larry Bernstein:
Welcome to What Happens Next. My name is Larry Bernstein. What Happens Next is a podcast which covers economics, politics, and education.
The topic today is Expelling Students Who Misbehave.
Our speaker will be Daniel Diermeier who is the Chancellor of Vanderbilt. I want to discuss with Daniel what caused the current chaos on college campuses and whether universities would be better served by remaining neutral on controversial political matters. I want to understand what the objectives of the university are and how free speech and civil discourse on campus fits into that.
What should be the rules of the road at our universities and should students who disobey the university’s code of conduct be expelled?
Buckle up.
Daniel, please begin with your opening six-minute remarks.
Daniel Diermeier:
The topic I want to talk about is the root causes of what happened on campuses over the last year. My sense is that the root cause is the politicization on campus. And there are remedies. The most important is that universities adopt a standard of principled neutrality, sometimes also called institutional neutrality, which fundamentally means that they will not take positions on political, policy, or social issues unless they directly and materially affect the necessary operations of the university.
What does it mean in practice? It would mean commenting on research funding for universities--that's perfectly okay, expected, and important. Commenting on South Sudan is not. So, you have to be very clear about what's in scope and not.
There are three fundamental reasons for that. All of them directly connected to the core purpose of the great research universities, which are to provide a transformative education and pathbreaking research, you need the free flow of ideas that involves free speech, a commitment to civil discourse, but also a commitment to institutional neutrality.
To have free exchange of ideas, you do not want to lay down a party line that may be controversial on campus, because you are unintentionally chilling debate. And it's very important that people discuss issues freely without being worried that they are in contrast with where the administration stands. The classic justification was articulated very well by the University of Chicago in the 1967 Kalven Report. It's also a value that we at Vanderbilt have been living with for a long time, so called as the chilling debate argument. The second one is that once you are taking positions, you are encouraging political lobbying from both sides and you are unintentionally creating an environment where people constantly want to push the university in one direction or the other. That is not where you want to be, and it creates an environment of intense politicization on campus.
And then the third argument, which is underappreciated, but it's at odds with the reverence that universities have for expertise. Universities are committed to expertise, and when we confer degrees, there's credentialing that people need to do the hard work. And when they do the hard work, then they get certified for that. And we recognize them as experts.
Having a university president making a statement on a complex issue, whether it is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the jurisprudence related to abortion, or the subtleties of climate change is inconsistent with that notion, especially when those comments have to be made under severe time pressure, often within 24 hours, because the expectations are such that if you're not commenting right away, then you're not sincere.
The chilling debate argument is number one, the politicization argument on campus number two, and the erosion of our reverence of expertise is the third. These are very compelling reasons for the universities to get out of the position taking business.
Now, it's important that this is not only about statements, but it's also about divestment or a commitment not to use the endowment for political purposes for taking positions. That this standard is not only applied to statements or positions made by the president or university chancellor, but also applies to deans, schools research centers, etc. Arguably having a commitment to neutrality is even more important than it is at the administrative level because that's where there's a material impact on the scholarly careers of our faculty. That is critical. We have had a lot of debate on free speech, which is very important. But the second pillar here is institutional neutrality, that's crucial. And the third component is civil discourse, which is about recognizing that we are members of one community that treat each other with respect and that use reason to convince somebody else not just pressure them.
Larry Bernstein:
Let's take an example in your history department, you have a Holocaust denier. He wants to write a paper on that subject. Is that something the university would step in? I'm trying to find that line where you say, okay, you got me.
Daniel Diermeier:
If you are a faculty member that is blatantly disregarding the fundamental standards or facts, you're no longer operating within the discipline. You've basically lost all credibility.
The issue that's a little bit trickier is where you have a mathematics professor who is denying the Holocaust. And usually what we would do in this case, we would say it's like you would disavow those type of statements. If it's just some outrageous thing that they're saying, you look whether this is consistent with their duty as a faculty member, are they doing it inside the classroom. These are professional conduct questions.
And then there are differences between public and private universities. There are all these subtleties that come in, but this has nothing to do with the academic credentials of the faculty member. And then they're basically talking as a private citizen at this point.
Larry Bernstein:
The University of Chicago established neutrality standards, but most universities do not follow the University of Chicago. They've done something else. Why do you think they've done that? What are the consequences? Is it easy to transition from where they are to neutrality? Why hasn't there been greater pushback to adopt neutrality?
Daniel Diermeier:
Most universities do not have a commitment to institutional neutrality. The ones that I'm aware of are University of Chicago, Vanderbilt, University of North Carolina, there may be more, but Harvard doesn't have it. Princeton doesn't have it, Yale doesn't have it, Columbia doesn't have it. Stanford doesn't have it. Northwestern doesn't have it. The way this usually manifests is on divestment. All the universities that I've mentioned have done some divestment, usually related to fossil fuels, but maybe to other issues as well.
There is confusion about the real purpose of the university and the distinction would be the faculty and the university as an institution. It's there to create an environment for faculty to do their job. And you want to create that platform so that people can do the best possible work that they're capable of doing. You want to encourage people to push the boundaries of conventional wisdom. That's crucial for a world-class research university.
Now, some university leaders confuse this with advocacy. Doesn't the world want to know what Harvard thinks about this issue? And the answer is, there may very well be cases where this is useful. But the consequence is that you're now creating an environment where people constantly expect you to take positions and lobby in one direction or the other. And you have to do it very quickly, which is just the opposite of what scientific rigor is all about. It's careful, it's deliberate. It requires expertise. So that's why it's so corrosive.
Harvard, like other universities, commissioned the faculty group and it came back with a recommendation that said very clearly the university should not stop making public statements on political issues. They should be of forceful advocates for the values of the academy. Totally consistent with the council report. Nothing new there, that's great. But on political issues, they should stay silent. I love that. That's wonderful. But then go all the way and stop using the endowment for making political statements too.
I wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal that argued that any university can do that tomorrow. I mean you put a committee together, you make a recommendation, you talk about what the principles are and go ahead.
And if certain universities feel that it's their mission to settle social or policy issues, I mean if they find a good argument, okay. But then be explicit about and what are the criteria? My worry is mostly that there's a lack of clarity. It's not that there is an alternative to the Kalven report. There just is nothing. And then there's one group that's really pushing that feels very, very strongly about whatever the issue is that grabs everybody's attention right now, whether that is private prisons or investing in fossil fuel companies. They're very motivated and then there's nobody pushing on the other side. And so, as a president you're taking the full brunt of this.
The attacks by activists are forceful, direct, very much ad hoc. You got protests in front of your house and bullhorns and you're being called names and it's not pleasant. And so, the temptation to cut a deal is very high.
Larry Bernstein:
I want to do a case study with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Imagine the university has a program in Ukraine where they have some university students studying there. They have students from Ukraine and Russia. We have faculty sympathetic to both sides. What should the university do for the students on the ground in Ukraine, the students on campus, and how do we handle the faculty who represent both sides of the conflict?
Daniel Diermeier:
Whenever there's a conflict, you have members of your community that are directly affected. And this is something that people confuse often is not taking a position doesn't necessarily mean you are silent. We had a school shooting in Nashville a year and a half ago, and it was a few miles from our campus and the head of the school was shot, and she was a Vanderbilt grad and there were a couple of other teachers that were Vanderbilt grads. It was a horrible story.
Now you can respond to this like being a rabbi or pastor, where you grieve with people and you connect with them and support them. If people are stranded in Ukraine, you're going to try to support them. That is what it means to be a community.
Or you can say, we are going to support gun control measures. My view would be you do the first, but don't do the second. Now why? The reason why you don't do the second is because people on campus with different perspective and expertise have all sorts of point of view on that.
There may be people that have studied gun control from a public health point of view, from a constitutional law point of view, from an economic incentive point of view, lots of different perspectives. Their job is to step up, be a public voice and join the public debate. It's not the job of the university president and say that's what we're supposed to be doing.
Larry Bernstein:
In 1985, I took American Economic History class with Walter Licht at Penn. Professor Licht said, “what's wrong with you kids? All you want to do is get a job on Wall Street, and none of you want to demonstrate outside on College Lawn. When I was a student, we caused hell. I'm just so disappointed in this group.” Well, he got his wish, 40 years later. And the methods of the uprisings on campus change and the rule book that was written when things were benign didn't consider all the bad behaviors that would exist during modern times, but the university is tied to the user guide that it has outstanding. Tell us about what happened at your university, how you were able to handle the code of conduct and what you did to bring a semblance of order back to the university.
Daniel Diermeier:
Great question. Everything that we do, we want to have it grounded in a purpose and in our values. Our purpose is creating a transformative education, being a place where pathbreaking research can take place. And then we have three pillars that support that pillar. One is we call open forum, which is about the maximal space for debate on campus. The second one is institutional neutrality, and the third was civil discourse. Civil discourse for us means treating each other with respect and using reasoned arguments with each other.
That is clearly communicated to all our students. When our freshmen join campus, they're signing the honor code. They're also signing a community creed that embodies the value of civil discourse. When they join the Vanderbilt community, they have signed onto those values and then we do a lot of programming to make sure that these values are lived because it's not so obvious of how to do this. People have to learn this, and many of them come unprepared from their high schools to be able to engage in civil discourse and debate. We call this Dialogue Vanderbilt. It's a whole set of programming around it. This is part of who we are and that everybody knows it and that we practice together.
For example, we have a Democratic student group on campus. We have a Republican student group on campus, and they have joint debates. This is what we want on controversial issues where they debate together and take different positions. That's what we mean by civil discourse. So those are the values.
After October 7th, our students did a great job. They lived those values; they engaged in serious discussions. We have a phenomenal class on the history of antisemitism about how it changes over time. We had a vigil. We had prayer meetings, we had very intense discussions in our residential colleges. I was very proud of my students. What we then saw late in the year was a more radical pro-Palestinian group, and we heard demands for position taking, both on the pro-Palestinian and from the pro-Israeli side.
We heard particularly from the pro-Palestinian side, is that the issue of genocide is so important to them that they felt they wouldn't be bound by a commitment to institutional neutrality and civil discourse. And just to be clear, institutional neutrality does not preclude students from taking positions. It just precludes the university from taking positions.
We made it very clear that institutional neutrality is a core value of the university and that it would not yield to demands for what's known as the BDS movement, boycotts and sanctions.
That was the beginning of the year. Then in late March, a group of students, about 27 of them forced entry into our main administrative building Kirkland Hall. At that time, it was just at the end of a gut renovation, people were already working there, but we still were doing some minor repairs and fixing things up. So, the hall was officially closed for visitors. So, under false pretenses, they convinced one of our security guys to open the door, and then they ran over the guard and he was injured. He was smashed into a door, pushed into a doorframe, had to go to the hospital was off the job for a couple of weeks, and then they ran upstairs and tried to push their way into my office.
They were stopped by my staff, and then they're outside in the foyer and chanted. And were then asked to leave, which they refused to do that. We made it clear to them that they would be subject to student discipline, and then in the morning hours around 4 AM, they were arrested, the three students that had injured the security guard and everybody else left at this point. We then had a disciplinary process. All the students were interim suspended from campus. They couldn't take classes and couldn't be on campus. Then we have a regular disciplinary process, which we use all the time whenever there are allegations of serious student misconduct. Three students were expelled. There was an appeals process that was upheld. From our point of view, that's the end.
The way I would summarize our response, we were very clear about what the rules and values were. We were pleased to see that our students acted in accordance with those values for a long time. When a small group of students explicitly violated university procedures, they were subject to the student disciplinary process. They were disciplined according to the severity of the misconduct, and that was it.
Larry Bernstein:
Other universities seem unwilling to apply a clear penalty for bad behavior. What are the consequences of not following up on your code of contact?
Daniel Diermeier:
It's very problematic if you state values and rules and then don't enforce them. The reasons are either lack of clarity on what the values are or an unwillingness to enforce them. And it undermines the principles on which the university is based. It continues to create more conflict on campus, and it encourages people to do try this on the next issue tomorrow. It confuses people because you don't know what's okay and what's not, and clarity on that is very much worthwhile.
Larry Bernstein:
I'm going to do a case study. I did a podcast with Rick Banks and Mike McConnell from Stanford Law School. The Federalist Society at the law school invited a Trump appointed judge to speak. When he got there, there was a mob that had not been invited to this private get together. They forced their way in.
There was screaming and yelling that inhibited that discussion. The judge turned to the DEI Dean. She had prepared six-minute remarks. She said that sometimes the juice is not worth the squeeze. The essence of it was that his words were not worth speaking. Then more personal attacks on both sides and the meeting adjourned.
The Dean of the Stanford Law School sent a note to the student body saying this was in violation of its free speech conduct. The DEI faculty member who gave the speech was initially put on probation and then was dismissed, but nothing happened to any of the students who acted badly in the event. And there was a sense that these are just kids, albeit that they're law school students at Stanford, and it relates to this idea that we want to encourage certain behavior, and then things get out of control and they look to the faculty for guidance. And the faculty was encouraging this behavior. How would you behave differently? What are the lessons to learn and what went wrong here?
Daniel Diermeier:
This is a classic challenge to free speech or the way we would call it, Vanderbilt Open Forum. And you have to be just super clear what your rules are, and I don't know what Stanford rules are on that, but I can tell you what they are at Vanderbilt and what they were when I was Provost at the University of Chicago, and how these instances were handled there. I had a similar incident at Chicago. Number one, what's your point of view on outside speakers? Who can invite them and what are the criteria? At Chicago and Vanderbilt, our policy is that recognized student groups or faculty can invite outside speakers as they see fit. They don't need approval for that.
Now, you can imagine there are other ways to handle this. One way to do this, to have no outside speakers, because somebody in a class can be controversial. We had on campus in a class on international relations, the Israeli ambassador one day and the next day the former Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority. Having these for students is absolutely priceless, so not having any speakers is a very bad idea.
The third option is you have some committee that decides that, and you can imagine what that's going to be like. It's going to be like constant pressure, not this one or the other. So consistent with the principle of Open Forum, the right way to do this is to say, if you're a recognized student group and you are a faculty member, you can invite whoever you want and we can handle this as a community. So that's principle one. Principle two, what happens now if a group of students is trying to disrupt the event, which is what happened at Stanford. Well, now you have to have a policy on disruptive conduct, which we have at Vanderbilt and which we had at Chicago as well. And the policy was there is no heckler’s veto. And if you are disrupting an event and you're screaming people down with bullhorns that makes it impossible for people to speak, you will be subject to discipline. And then you go exactly through the similar discipline process that I mentioned before, and then there are going to be sanctions, and then you may be suspended or whatever the severity of the sanction is. I think that's the way to handle this.
Larry Bernstein:
The presidents of Penn, Harvard, and MIT were called in front of a House Committee to discuss their policies, and two of the three ended up resigning afterwards. What do you think about what they had to say, and what did it reflect about the trouble in senior administration at our universities?
Daniel Diermeier:
Universities are facing the biggest crisis since the sixties. We've had two leaders of the world's leading universities resigning is very serious. It undermines the reputation of higher education especially the leading private research universities.
The root cause of that is the politicization of the great universities. That's now in the open and it behooves all of us as university leaders that this is undermining our reputation to go back to our core values, state them clearly, and then act accordingly.
Larry Bernstein:
Many university presidents are nervous about expelling students. They instinctively want to give young people a second chance. The reality is that the expulsion of a couple of students who violate the conduct of the university sends a very strong message to the student body and will have a direct effect on behavior immediately. How should university presidents think about its decision to expel a student who violates the code of conduct?
Daniel Diermeier:
Any type of sanction, whether it's a suspension or probation or expulsion, is you have a structured process. You have clear expectation about what conduct is. For example, you're not allowed to use violence against members of the community. And if you're violating that the rules are applied to you in an equitable fashion. So that's it.
If we are expelling students because they get into a fight during a fraternity party and they're doing similar conduct in another context, then what's the argument? The critical question to me is what rules were violated? Did they violate a certain standard? Was the disciplinary process applied in the way we always apply it? And if it has a finding and the finding says this student should be expelled, the students should be expelled. And we expel students for all sorts of reasons. Every university does. And this discipline process is very detailed. It looks at the context. Did they know what they were doing, what were they warned? Did they understand that? I mean, it's a good and thorough process, but if that process comes to the conclusion that the student violated the rules and knew that, then you have to enforce it. That is straightforward.
Larry Bernstein:
I end each podcast with a note of optimism. Daniel, what are you optimistic about as it relates to the depoliticization and neutrality of university administrations?
Daniel Diermeier:
Out of crisis comes opportunity, and the last year was such a trying period for universities that the tensions and the inconsistencies that were simmering beneath the surface are now out in the open. Discussions and questions about free speech and institutional neutrality and civil discourse are now front and center for university presidents, administrators, boards, and the public.
I love it that we now have these debates. I love the fact that many universities are considering moving into a direction of institutional neutrality. I'm optimistic by the fact that boards, alumni, and the public have woken up to that, and that we're moving in a direction which is very salutary for universities in general.
Larry Bernstein:
Thanks Daniel, for joining us today.
If you missed our previous podcast, check it out. The topic was Shooting Donald Trump. Our speaker was Gerald Posner who is the author of Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK. You may recall that Gerald and I previously recorded a two-part podcast series on Oswald and JFK that can be found on our website’s archive.
I discussed with Gerald what we know so far about Trump’s assassin and the secret service security failure, and why the public gravitates immediately to conspiracy theories.
I would like to make a plug for next week’s show with Scott Turow who is the author of the book Presumed Innocent which has recently been made into an 8-part mini-series. I want to learn from Scott about adapting his novels for TV and film.
You can find our previous episodes and transcripts on our website whathappensnextin6minutes.com. Please subscribe to our weekly emails and follow us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Thank you for joining us today, good-bye.
Check out our previous episode, Shooting Donald Trump, here.
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