Vanderbilt Faculty Senate Votes Overwhelmingly to Oppose Trump Loyalty Oath

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Vanderbilt Faculty Senate Votes Overwhelmingly to Adopt Resolution Opposing
Trump Loyalty Oath, Following Closely on Heels of Anti-Compact March, Rally

NASHVILLE, TN – Wednesday, October 8, 2025 — The Vanderbilt Faculty Senate met in emergency session Wednesday evening to discuss President Donald Trump’s proposed “Compact for Excellence in Higher Education.”

The session was well-attended by members of the Faculty Assembly, with an estimated 150-200 non-Senate faculty present.

Senator Jonathan Gilligan introduced the following resolution:

WHEREAS the United States Secretary of Education has requested that Vanderbilt University enter into a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education”, and

WHEREAS the Compact contains provisions antithetical to the mission and traditions of the University, and

WHEREAS the Compact contains provisions which endanger the independence and integrity of the University, and

WHEREAS the Compact likely violates state and federal law, and infringes upon the constitutional rights of members of the University community, and

WHEREAS Vanderbilt University exemplifies American academic values of the highest standard, including universal right to free speech and the cultivation of academic freedom; therefore

BE IT RESOLVED that the Faculty Senate of Vanderbilt University firmly opposes this Compact as written and calls upon Chancellor Diermeier and the Board of Trust to also reject this Compact outright as well as any similar proposal compromising the mission, values, and independence of the University.

Brief comments followed, all in support of the resolution.

Under Robert’s Rules of Order, the next regularly scheduled opportunity to vote on the resolution would have been November 23rd, making the vote moot given the deadline to respond to the invitation. 

Several senators pressed for options to expedite voting, leading to an initial vote to suspend the Rules of Order, which passed by a super-majority (33 for, 11 against).

Debate on the resolution then began.

Senator Gilligan explained the text was closely modeled on the resolution passed by the University of Virginia Faculty Senate, to help ensure unity and solidarity across institutions in opposing the compact. 

Several suggestions for additional language followed. Though remaining open to persuasion based on the overall sentiment of the room, Senator Gilligan again cautioned against language changes, an opinion then echoed by senators concerned with starting down a path of addressing every problematic aspect of the compact, an exercise likely to result in an unwieldy and less impactful overall statement.

Faculty anticipate the Vanderbilt administration will be in favor of joining the compact; a concern was raised that passing an independent resolution that challenges the administration may result in dissolution of the Faculty Senate, which serves at the pleasure of the Chancellor and Board of Trust.

After several further comments addressing these concerns, the vote proceeded, open to all elected senators as well as the dean of each of Vanderbilt’s 12 schools, who serve ex officio. 

The resolution was adopted by a vote of 30 for, 11 against, 1 abstention.

Earlier in the day, a large group of students and faculty marched across the Vanderbilt campus to rally outside the Kirkland Hall administrative building, where they delivered a petition in opposition to the compact, at the time of delivery signed by over 1,000 Vanderbilt community members.

For further information, Senator Gilligan is available for comment.

Statement by the Vanderbilt AAUP Executive Committee on the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education”

October 6, 2025

On October 2nd, Vanderbilt was among nine universities “invited” to sign a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” with the federal government. The Compact, however, is a threat. It aims to control nearly every aspect of university operations, from admissions, hiring, tuition, and grades, to controlling the teaching and research content of academic units, and enforcing a strict, binary definition of “male” and “female” according to reproductive function. Furthermore, compliance with the dictates of the ten-page Compact is subject to ongoing, annual review by the Justice Department, and non-compliance would be punished with loss of access to student loan grant programs, federal contracts, research funding, approval of visas, and tax exemption.

The Compact’s attempted coercion continues a pattern of ongoing political interference into higher education. It contravenes federal law and deeply held institutional and professional principles. The Compact undermines the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by characterizing the recognition of demographic diversity as discrimination. Meanwhile, its requirements to police foreign students’ activities for alignment with “American and Western values,” monitor or abolish programs deemed to hold anti-conservative bias, and restrictive definitions of sex and gender would be all too discriminatory—and destructive—in their effects. The Compact’s requirement for protection against the “belittling” of “conservative ideas” in the name of fostering a “vibrant marketplace of ideas on campus” represents an untenable subversion of academic freedom, and is readily abusable. Demands about admissions, use of standardized tests, and preference for specific programs of study directly flout the shared governance rights of faculty. Under the heading of “institutional neutrality,” the Compact also violates faculty rights by severely restricting permissible individual expression within and outside of the university. Many of these requirements would expose Vanderbilt to massive litigation, squandering institutional resources and energies. But more broadly, it is difficult to interpret the Compact as anything other than a direct and concerted assault on academic freedom, and thus on the core identity of our institution and on the role of higher education in American society.

We cannot sincerely ask our students to “dare to grow” in the environment of fear and mistrust that this Compact would produce in our community. Academic freedom and institutional autonomy require that decisions about university operations and teaching and research in academic units be jointly made by the faculty in accordance with procedures of shared governance set by our university. We join the AAUP National Leadership in urging the Board of Trust, Chancellor Diermeier, Provost Raver, and the Vanderbilt leadership to completely reject this Trump loyalty oath and any other that seeks to commandeer Vanderbilt’s institutional autonomy. Additionally, we insist on meaningful shared governance on campus and consultation with faculty regarding the Compact.

The Vanderbilt Chapter of the AAUP stands with the national AAUP, the AAUP chapters of the other targeted universities, and members of the Vanderbilt community in opposing the Compact and demanding that our administration do so as well. We encourage our colleagues at Vanderbilt – students, faculty, staff, and alumni – to join us in signing a petition started by graduate student workers at Vanderbilt. Faculty who are interested in joining our efforts to organize a response can write to us at vanderbiltaaup@gmail.com.

AAUP/AFT: Universities Must Reject Trump Admin “Loyalty Oath” Compacts

Statement issued October 2, 2025 by AAUP President Todd Wolfson and AFT President Randi Weingarten. Original version here.

The Trump administration’s offer to give preferential treatment to colleges and universities in exchange for allegiance to a partisan ideological agenda stinks of favoritism, patronage, and bribery. It is entirely corrupt. White House Policy Strategist May Mailman reportedly hopes that “a lot of schools see that” government control of their institution is “highly reasonable.” In reality, adherence to Mailman’s loyalty oath would usher in a new era of thought policing in American higher education. Mailman’s compacts would steer tax payer money in ways that violate core principles of US higher education and democracy and cripple innovation. They would reward campuses that toe the party line and punish those that cherish their independence. In doing so, it would commit the very viewpoint discrimination it claims to redress.

The AAUP and AFT urge all college and university governing boards, campus administrations, academic disciplinary organizations, and higher education trade groups to reject such collusion with the Trump administration and to stand firmly on the side of free expression and higher education as the anchor of opportunity for all. Mailman’s compact would permit unqualified bureaucrats and partisan hacks to rule over matters such as college admissions and classroom discussion. The federal government should not, under any circumstances, dictate who goes to college, what can be researched,or learned, and what can or can’t be the subject of critical academic inquiry. A Mailman compact would turn a university administration into a weapon of the executive branch.

All nine university governing boards and presidents must stand together to oppose Mailman’s “loyalty oath” compacts. To the leaders of Vanderbilt University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Arizona, Brown University, and the University of Virginia: Acquiescing to a Mailman compact would be a profound betrayal of your students, staff, faculty, the public, higher education, and our shared democracy—one that would irretrievably tarnish your personal reputation and compromise your institution’s legacy. We urge you not to capitulate and not to negotiate but to unite now in defense of democracy and higher education.

Coverage of Vanderbilt Faculty Letter Regarding Student Activists and Free Expression on Campus

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

Risky for no reason? Faculty demand answers (op-ed in the Vanderbilt Hustler)

Vanderbilt’s leadership has jeopardized our community’s safety by prioritizing in-person classes while ignoring faculty concerns.

This op-ed by Vanderbilt AAUP appeared in the Vanderblit Hustler on August 21, 2020.

In late July, the Vanderbilt chapter of the American Association of University Professors (VAAUP) delivered a petition to Vanderbilt’s senior administration, calling for measures to protect the health of the university community throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The VAAUP consists of instructors of all ranks, including tenured, tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty, graduate-student instructors and current and former members of the Faculty Council and Faculty Senate. The measures we are seeking include making online course instruction the default, incorporating meaningful faculty governance into university decision-making and establishing transparent and rigorous testing and quarantine protocols.

To date, the petition has 524 signatures from faculty, students, alumni and parents, including 182 signatures from faculty members. The administration has made no official acknowledgment of the petition, and the issues it addresses have only become more urgent.

Current plans to resume extensive in-person teaching and campus activities will almost certainly result in serious illness and even death for some in the Vanderbilt community. The administration has justified this risk by citing the mission of residential education. It has made reopening campus the priority and tailored its health and teaching policies to support this goal. By pitting educational mission, public health and faculty governance against one another, the administration jeopardizes the safety of our community. This approach compromises the ability of faculty, students and staff to teach, learn and work effectively.

Senior administrators, including Provost Susan Wente, have asserted that Vanderbilt’s mission of residential education demands that a significant number of courses be taught in-person. The administration has emphasized in-person teaching by invoking “the strengths of residential education” and “our scholarly missions as a residential research university.” But peer institutions that also prioritize residential education, including Harvard, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton, have all switched to total or near-total remote teaching in the fall. They recognize that in-person instruction will expose faculty, students and staff to the risk of deadly infection, without necessarily improving the quality of education. We call upon Vanderbilt to commit to safe teaching and learning, as other institutions have already done. 

The university should not promote the idea that in-person teaching is the best kind of teaching during a pandemic. In fact, in-person classes will pose numerous obstacles to effective teaching and learning. Students will be forced to sit at least six feet away from each other, wearing masks and struggling to hear masked instructors. Some instructors will be standing behind plexiglass partitions. By contrast, students learning online will be able to see everyone unmasked and congregate in small groups with their peers. 

More fundamentally, no approach to teaching can be deemed “effective” if it exposes students, faculty and staff members to a deadly virus.

Scientists note that the virus is most likely to spread indoors, in poorly-ventilated rooms, with people projecting voices over extended periods: these conditions define the college classroom. The risk of infection persists even if everyone in the room wears a mask. And converging evidence indicates that the virus can spread via aerosols that linger in the air, traveling distances over six feet. Vanderbilt has updated ventilation and filtration in some classroom buildings, but they have not communicated specifics of which buildings have been updated. Under these conditions, the university should allow instructors to choose how they will teach to maximize their personal safety.

According to Vanderbilt’s current policy, however, instructors are only guaranteed the option of online teaching if they qualify for a disability accommodation. Our group has heard from junior and contingent faculty who have felt pressured to teach in person, for fear of retribution should they request an online accommodation. Vanderbilt’s policies are forcing some of the most vulnerable members of our community to choose between their health and their work. Not surprisingly, twenty-one of our colleagues elected to sign VAAUP’s petition anonymously (as did 42 students). A default online policy, allowing instructors to teach in person if they choose, would help to alleviate some of these structural inequities. It would also protect the health of housekeeping and maintenance staff, who are placed at risk by the re-opening of campus.

Our safety is also at risk because of the alarming level of viral infection in Nashville and surrounding areas. The Harvard Global Health Initiative COVID-19 risk map places Davidson county at the highest, “red,” risk level, necessitating “stay-at-home orders.” As of Aug. 19, Nashville’s 7-day positivity rate of COVID-19 tests is at a worrying 11.3 percent. For comparison, the World Health Organization recommended in May that the positivity rate remains below five percent for at least two weeks before governments consider reopening. Despite the prevalence of the coronavirus off-campus, the university doesn’t plan to pre-screen instructors, graduate and professional students and staff for infection. Nor will it—as Vanderbilt AAUP’s petition demands—offer testing-on-demand for university employees, as some peer institutions are doing. Vanderbilt is one of a dwindling number of colleges and universities undertaking an experiment that risks a serious outbreak. 

With such high stakes, it is all the more concerning that university decision-making during the pandemic has not been open and transparent. No broad faculty input was sought to guide fall planning: no large-scale surveys were circulated, no comprehensive  meetings called, no inclusive committees formed. The Faculty Senate, the elected body representing faculty, was never called upon to debate or comment on fall plans, even though the administration has repeatedly implied that its decisions were guided by Senate input. Once senior administrators arrived at the decision to reopen campus, policies were made and then handed over to committees for justification. These committees contained very few of the teaching faculty being asked to put themselves at risk. Faculty were invited to submit questions at a series of carefully controlled “town hall” meetings this summer, but such a one-way forum does not constitute substantive input.

Our petition calls for meaningful participation in university decision-making by all instructors and staff. The American Association of University Professors affirms this right as a basic principle of academic freedom, stating, “No important institutional decision should be made unilaterally by administrations or governing boards.”

Why does faculty input matter? For one thing, faculty have professional expertise in how to educate students and manage classrooms. They have already been working hard over the spring and summer to determine what good teaching looks like in the pandemic era. Faculty are also experts in directly-relevant topics in the sciences, social sciences and humanities, yet little of this expertise is guiding administrators’ decisions. This refusal to engage in meaningful dialogue with the faculty places our entire community at risk and undermines the quality of teaching and learning at Vanderbilt. 

Many questions remain about what will happen once campus reopens. Some of these have been raised by a coalition of concerned Vanderbilt parents, and are also surely on students’ minds. For instance, is there a rate of community infection in Nashville that would cause Vanderbilt to change its plans? What will happen to instructors who take the logical step of moving their class online after an infected person has attended class? Will senior administrators take personal responsibility for the inevitable illness and deaths of students, staff and faculty? Will the university provide compensation for the medical care and lost health and life incurred by its actions? Has the university budgeted for the lawsuits that will ensue after the virus sweeps through the campus? How will the university respond to the death of a student, staff person or faculty member?

As outbreaks emerge on re-opening campuses across the country, we need accountable leadership at Vanderbilt to make decisions that first and foremost prioritize the health and safety of our community. 

Vanderbilt AAUP Statement on ICE International Student Policy

July 10, 2020

On July 6, 2020, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced that international students taking a full online course load will not be issued visas or, if they are currently in the US, will face deportation. The Vanderbilt University chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) chapter denounces this policy. The policy exemplifies both the Trump administration’s racist, xenophobic approach to immigrants and refugees, as well as  its failures to address the COVID-19 pandemic. We stand with the more than 30,000 faculty nationwide (as of this writing) who have signed the Open Letter Against the Student Ban, which rejects university complicity with the ICE policy.

In our “Petition to the Vanderbilt University Administration for a More Just, Equitable, and Safe Response to COVID-19,” which is currently circulating for signatures, we demand that the University take action informed by structural and collective responsibility, rather than placing the onus on individual professors to opt in or out of online teaching. Vanderbilt must do everything in its power to prevent the deportation of international students and to protect public health and safety on campus: our university must reject any logic that sets one of these essential goals against the other. Unfortunately, the ICE edict compounds dangers already posed by Vanderbilt policies to the health of non-resident and resident students. 

We demand that Vanderbilt University:

  1. Join together with other institutions to oppose ICE’s policy through lobbying, advocacy, and legal challenges. Vanderbilt must use its leverage as a preeminent research university and collaborate with other higher education institutions to pressure ICE to reinstate its March 13 guidance enabling online classes to count towards a full course of study, extending this temporary provision for the upcoming 2020-21 academic year. Two major universities have filed a lawsuit in Federal Court challenging the change in policy, and at least 45 others have filed amicus briefs as of July 10. Vanderbilt should pursue the most assertive legal action possible to protect its international students. 
  2. Give priority to international students (undergraduate and graduate) in the selection of face-to-face classes during fall registration and future semesters in which ICE’s policy is in place. While the default online teaching proposal may increase the number of online classes, the university can protect international students through policy improvements. Before finalizing the fall 2020 course schedule, the administration can privilege international students in enrollment for face-to-face courses, and expand online course offerings for other students to ensure the correct number of seats. This solution protects instructors from teaching on campus against their will while providing international students access to the correct number of courses. Even more importantly, this systemic solution will affirm an institutional commitment to protecting international students rather than placing responsibility on individual faculty. 

Our petition, which was drafted and began circulating before ICE’s announcement, advocates for changes to university policy for both types of international students affected by ICE’s most recent policies. The Petition’s request for default online teaching, with the option for any faculty member to choose to teach on campus, allows for some face-to-face classes while emphasizing safety, equity, consistent pedagogy, and quality scholarship. In addition, the Petition’s other demands directly address Vanderbilt’s policies that have damaging implications for international students.

  1. For international students still abroad, the Petition demands that they be able to study, research, and teach while remaining in good standing and receiving stipend payments, financial assistance, and benefits. Many of these students are not able to return to the US due to travel restrictions. Current Vanderbilt policies ask them to put their lives at risk to return, or risk being forced to take leave. The new ICE rule would similarly ask these students to risk their lives to receive education, and deny immunocompromised or high-risk international students the ability to access online teaching.
  2. For international graduate students in the US, the Petition demands that they must be able to choose on-campus teaching and courses, according to their own health needs.

Adoption of default online teaching would significantly aid the university in grappling with the consequences of this ICE policy in the interests of international students. The immediate implementation of online default and rapid identification of instructors planning to teach face-to-face would free up administrative resources currently being used to process faculty accommodations requests and outfit classrooms, and enhance the university’s capacity to secure international students slots in face-to-face classes as soon as possible.

As instructors devoted to equitable and rigorous education, we stand in solidarity with our international undergraduate, professional, and graduate students. We refuse the false choice between deportation and exposure to COVID-19. We are committed to working with the university administration, faculty staff, and targeted students in a manner that maximizes everyone’s safety.

Vanderbilt Instructors Call for University Administration to Rethink Campus Reopening

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 13, 2020

Vanderbilt Instructors Call for University Administration to Rethink Campus Reopening

Contact: AAUP media liaison, 615-933-3669, vanderbiltaaup@gmail.com

Nashville, Tennessee. More than 400 Vanderbilt faculty, graduate student instructors, and other community members have signed a petition (https://bit.ly/vufall2020 ) calling for default online teaching for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic. Faculty are concerned that the university’s plan for campus reopening puts the health and safety of community members at risk. The plan also endangers the university’s commitment to offering a superior education. Petitioners demand equity in access to healthcare, testing, and accommodations for all university employees, as well as support for all instructors, with priority given to international graduate students threatened with deportation by ICE.

Vanderbilt faculty fear the administration’s decision to house up to 6,000 undergraduates on campus will adversely impact Nashville’s public health. Activity in downtown Nashville has led to the summer spike in COVID-19 cases with dangerous proximity to Vanderbilt’s campus. Dr. Peter F. Rebeiro, infectious disease epidemiologist with VUMC said, “Vanderbilt’s default position should be responsive to transmission in the community. Until a vaccine is available or the susceptible population is otherwise substantially depleted, remote contact and physical distancing are the best ways to minimize the risk of exposure. Vanderbilt should remain as flexible as possible on remote instruction. If faculty and students become vectors of transmission, they put the Vanderbilt and Nashville communities at risk.” 

Currently, instructors with caregiving responsibilities await authorization for university accommodations to teach online. Parents in particular are concerned about the uncertainty of primary and secondary school openings. The petition demands greater transparency from the administration, greater faculty participation in decision-making, and institutional policies attentive to non-discrimination and anti-racism. 

As U.S. colleges and universities bring student-athletes and others back to campus, new clusters of infection have emerged.. “We are very concerned that the Vanderbilt campus could become a source of infection for the university’s many local workers and the surrounding neighborhoods,” said Celia Applegate, Professor of History and member of the Faculty Senate. 

The new Vanderbilt chapter of the AAUP (American Association of University Professors) organized the petition. Its members now insist that Vanderbilt do everything in its power to prevent the deportation of international students and protect public health and safety on campus. For more information on Vanderbilt AAUP’s position on the ICE announcement, see: https://vanderbiltaaup.org/2020/07/10/vaaup-statement-on-ice/. 

Follow us on Twitter @VanderbiltAAUP.