Our Open Letter currently has over 170 signatories. A group of faculty have met with Provost Raver to reiterate our demands and have written a follow-up letter (see below).
NEWS COVERAGE
The student sit-in and subsequent response have been covered widely in the news, including:
New York Times, Is This the End of Academic Freedom?, April 5, 2004.
Chronicle of Higher Education, Students Are Voting to Support Boycotts of Israel. How Are Colleges Responding?, April 5, 2024
Vanderbilt Hustler, Three students expelled following Student Accountability hearings, faculty criticize university response, April 6, 2024
The Guardian, Nineteen California college students arrested over pro-Palestine protests
Pomona students charged for art protest as three expelled, one suspended and 20 on probation in Tennessee for Vanderbilt sit-in, April 7, 2024
The Wall Street Journal, Free Speech Is for Campus Reporters Too, April 7, 2024
Democracy Now, ACLU Warns Against UMich Censorship Policy over Palestinian Rights Activism, April 9, 2024
WKRN, Vanderbilt University faculty, staff want to ‘repeal all suspensions and criminal charges’ following student protest, April 10
The Tennessean, Vanderbilt University claims a commitment to free speech. But does it deliver?, April 11, 2024
Protean Magazine, Discipline and Protest, April 29, 2024
The Middle Eastern Studies Association also penned Letter to Vanderbilt University concerning the suspension of students engaged in peaceful protest, April 8, 2024
Nashville Banner, Campus Protests: Vanderbilt Students’ Pro-Palestinian Encampment Enters Second Month, April 26, 2024
The Intercept, AHEAD OF CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY, COLUMBIA PRESIDENT CRACKS DOWN ON STUDENT ADVOCACY FOR PALESTINE. Columbia, Vanderbilt, and Pomona College all seriously disciplined students protesting against Israel’s war in Gaza this month. April 15, 2024
FOLLOW-UP LETTER
April 25, 2024
Dear Provost Raver:
Thank you for meeting with us last Friday to discuss the public letter that we and over 170 of our Vanderbilt faculty and staff colleagues signed to convey our concerns with the university’s handling of the Vanderbilt Divestment Coalition sit-in at Kirkland Hall. You were generous with your time at a busy point in the semester and a fraught moment for our university. We appreciate your comment that peaceful demonstrators have been permitted to continue camping outside Kirkland Hall; we hope the administration’s acceptance of nonviolent protest outdoors will continue.
While reiterating the concerns we raised in our letter, we wish also to register our growing discomfort about the integrity of the process for students currently appealing disciplinary decisions. In our meeting, you deflected our substantive concerns that harsh and selective discipline of student protesters does grave damage to our intellectual and pedagogical community. Instead, you emphasized the necessity of waiting out the university’s student disciplinary process. You suggested that any deviation from the process would be unfair to other students subject to disciplinary action. While we question whether the student accountability code and processes, as currently formulated, provide the appropriate frame within which to respond to student protest, we have even graver concerns with your claim that you are powerless to act because of the pendency of the appellate process. Our worry is that the administration’s public statements and actions have tainted the neutrality of the process. We find these statements antithetical to the pedagogical mission of the university and at odds with the idea of an inclusive intellectual community on which that mission rests.
Since the forcible removal of students from Kirkland Hall on March 27th, Chancellor Diermeier has issued a number of statements regarding the events through emails to the campus community, an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, and interviews with the New York Times and NPR’s Morning Edition. These statements contain multiple misrepresentations and omissions, too many to catalog here, which have a concrete, negative impact on the students facing disciplinary action, on the integrity of our intellectual and pedagogical community, and on the bonds of trust on which our community depends. Some of these misrepresentations have been pointed out by student journalists in the Vanderbilt Hustler and in their letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal, and by Vanderbilt AAUP on X (formerly Twitter).
Chancellor Diermeier’s statements delegitimize student protest and assume predetermined outcomes for students involved in an ongoing accountability process. He has referred to their actions as “vandalism” and equated their protest with “disruption.” In his NPR interview and in his remarks to the Faculty Senate, he said students “ran over” the Community Service officer at the entrance to Kirkland Hall. He has asserted that “protest [and] disruption” are the feckless aim of a small and marginal group of students. Indeed, he has stated directly that the students who entered Kirkland Hall “were not interested in discourse.” In fact, the students made clear they hoped to speak to the Chancellor. His mischaracterization of the students’ aim and their supposed marginality is further belied by the 100-plus students and dozens of faculty who walked out in support of suspended students on April 8, the dozens of residential life staff members petitioning against sanctions for student protesters, and the extensive educational and cultural programming carried out by the Vanderbilt Divest Coalition. Dialogue and engagement on the important underlying issues were, and remain, the point. Chancellor Diermeier nonetheless continues to broadcast the assertion that the protest did not implicate issues of “free speech,” even calling that core value a “red herring.” His characterization of the events removes all context of legitimate protest from the students’ actions. When the Chancellor has prejudged the matter so publicly and so repeatedly, it seems impossible to expect a fair process.
Through his public comments, the Chancellor is placing his thumb on the scales of impartial justice. His communications are using our students to make a point to an outside audience, thus betraying the university’s pedagogical mission. This should be troubling for all students, faculty, and staff on this campus. We continue to call on the administration to repeal all expulsions, suspensions, disciplinary sanctions, and criminal charges against the students, and bring this matter to a conclusion in a way that reinvigorates faith in fair process and the pedagogical mission of the university.
Sincerely,
Carwil Bjork-James, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology
Jefferson Cowie, James G. Stahlman Professor of History, Department of History
Joerg Rieger, Distinguished Professor of Theology, Divinity School
Daniel J. Sharfstein, Dick and Martha Lansden Chair in Law, Law School
Samira Sheikh, Associate Professor, Department of History
Vanderbilt AAUP 