Daniel Diermeier, previously the Provost of the University of Chicago, moved to Vanderbilt University in 2020 where he became the Chancellor (i.e., the Boss). I wish he’d stayed here, for he might have become President after Bob Zimmer died, and I admire a lot about Diermeier. For example, he has no truck with coddling protestors or allowing violations of campus regulations: he had illegal “sit-in” protestors arrested at Vanderbilt, something that the University of Chicago never did and never would do.
And he’s been controversial, most recently for commissioning a group report on the “State of Scholarship in the Humanities and the Humanistic Social Sciences,” which called out these fields for the erosion of scholarship promoted by ideology (see my post here). Humanities scholars went wild in response, many denying that there was such erosion or, even if politics invaded the humanities, it was what was desirable. Anthropology took the biggest hit: here’s a sentence from the report:
In the most extreme cases (e.g., anthropology), we see a widespread deterioration in scholarly standards grounded in a pervasive repudiation of ideals of objectivity together with a toxic intellectual climate in which reasonable dissent on politically charged topics is routinely suppressed and punished.
Them’s strong words, and woke anthropologists like Agustín”Sex Is a Spectrum” Fuentes got their knickers in a twist. Note that Diermeier was not among the ten authors of the report, but he did commission it and presumably helped suggest the authors, and for sure he agrees with most of the report’s conclusions. And yes, ideological erosion of scholarship is a danger, not just in the humanities but also STEM fields.
One of Diermeier’s biggest projects has been the promotion of ideological neutrality in universities, i.e., the principle that universities should not take stands on moral, political, or ideological issues unless those issues involve the very mission of the university (scholarship, teaching, etc.). The University of Chicago was the very first university to adopt ideological neutrality, now embodied in our Kalven Report that was created in 1967. As Provost at Chicago, one of Diermeier’s responsibilities was ensuring that Kalven remained intact, and since then he’s both talked and written about the importance of ideological neutrality. I won’t repeat the rationale here, as you can see it at the preceding link, and Diermeier has both talked and written about it.
Below is a recent 2.5-minute interview Dieremeier did with Fox News (of course). Although the report and Diermeier claim that more than 150 universities have adopted institutional neutrality, I’m not sure where that figure comes from. The FIRE list of colleges that have adopted institutional neutrality lists but 50 schools (the list is growing rapidly), but there’s a Heterodox Academy (HxA) report that lists about 150 schools. Some schools on the HxA report, like Reed College, do not appear in the FIRE report, and I’m wondering if there are different standards used by HxA and FIRE
Regardless, it’s true that institutional neutrality—something anathema to the woke, many of whom demand that colleges and universities take stands—is spreading. I remember not too long ago when FIRE had only about a dozen schools on the list.
But I think the case for institutional neutrality is virtually unassailable, for it is a way of ensuring that the university community can speak freely without fear of retribution from bucking an “official” university position. This holds University-wide at Chicago, and also for departments, schools, subunits, and so on—even for the University’s Lab Schools that run from kindergarten through grade 12. (The Lab Schools are a perennial problem, as the teachers and administrators have often insisted on taking political positions and have to be repeatedly reminded that they’re violating University policy in so doing (the Lab Schools are considered part of the University).
Anyway, the interview:
Thanks for keeping us up on Former Provost Diermeier; I too wish he could have succeeded President Zimmer at Chicago. A former state secretary of education, a former college president himself, once explained to me how different the jobs of provost and president are: the provost is the academic leader and can be and support controversial ideas, while the president is a fundraiser and must get along with everyone, alums, legislators, ceo’s, faculty, students. That was almost twenty years ago and I am still depressed. Because to me the president (or chancellor) is the real leader of the institution. Moreover from my observations over this long period, the secretary’s definitions seem to be mostly true. So when I see a strong Provost selected as president, I am impressed that the selection board/committee is going against the grain and setting up its university for something very special…as at Vanderbilt.