Free Speech Is Alive and Well at Vanderbilt University Students, including BDS advocates, are free to engage in protests and required to follow the rules and respect civil discourse. By Daniel Diermeier
The purpose of a university is to assemble a talented group of students from a range of backgrounds and help them grow and learn as part of a community. This includes teaching them how to appreciate a range of perspectives—and to learn how, not what, to think. The university remains one of the last places in society where people with diverse viewpoints can engage in the kind of civil dialogue that allows them to explore complex topics—and find innovative solutions to difficult problems—together. To this end, university students should debate one another respectfully. They should challenge each other’s ideas, as well as their own. If part of that process involves protest, then they should engage in that, too.
Protesting is something that Vanderbilt students have been doing weekly since the start of the war in Gaza. While protests have turned disruptive and even violent elsewhere, those at Vanderbilt had remained peaceful and resulted in civil exchange, including counterprotests, lectures and debates. This commitment to civil discourse is typical for our students. Last month, our College Democrats and College Republicans held a joint debate on another divisive issue: gun control. Despite the charged subject matter, the student-led event was notable for its substance and civility.
Vanderbilt has worked hard to nurture a culture of free expression built on three pillars. The first is a determination to provide an open forum: opportunities for dialogue and debate. The second is the practice of institutional neutrality, by which university leaders refrain from publicly taking political positions to avoid indirectly stifling free thought and expression among students and faculty. Last and most distinctive is a commitment to civil discourse, the practice of respectful argument rooted in facts, which our undergraduates agree to uphold when they sign a student-authored community creed before taking their first classes.
These commitments were tested for about 24 hours starting March 26. Vanderbilt, like many universities, is home to a group of students who support the international boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. The BDS effort encourages economic and political pressure aimed at ending Israel’s current policies toward Palestinians, which organizers say are oppressive, immoral and in some cases illegal. The movement calls for economic and cultural boycotts, financial divestment and government sanctions.
Some believe that BDS is antisemitic. The movement touches a particularly raw nerve since the Holocaust in Nazi Germany started with boycotts of Jewish businesses. I made clear at the start of the semester that, consistent with our commitment to institutional neutrality, Vanderbilt doesn’t boycott or divest from companies doing business in or with specific nations, unless required by law.
Some students supporting BDS declared their opposition to Vanderbilt’s institutional neutrality, calling it a cop-out, or worse. They advocated for a reversal of course on a campus referendum that would have required student government funds to follow BDS restrictions, which the university had disallowed because following those restrictions would put Vanderbilt in violation of Tennessee law. The student government isn’t legally separate from the university, and student-government funds are university funds. The law requires the university to certify each year that it isn’t involved in any boycotts of Israel, which the state defines broadly. Failing to make the certification, or acting contrary to it, would put large state contracts for the university at risk. Implementing the BDS restrictions with university funds also potentially conflicts with federal laws governing boycotts of countries friendly to the U.S.
Like all Vanderbilt students, those supporting BDS are free to speak out and demonstrate on our campus—subject, like all student groups and as at all universities, to reasonable limits on the time, place and manner of their protests.
On Tuesday, 27 students transgressed those limits when they forced their way into a closed administrative building, injuring a community-service officer in the process. Students pushed staff members and screamed profanities. Our staff took a graduated approach to de-escalating the situation, including several attempts to discuss the issues with the student group and encourage them to take a different course of action. Over 20 hours, the students were consistently informed that they were violating university policies and warned that they were subject to suspension for doing so.
Early the next morning, the Metropolitan Nashville and Davidson County Magistrate’s Office charged three students with assault. One student protesting outside the building was charged with vandalism after cracking a window. The remaining 25 students left the building voluntarily. The administration suspended all of those students on an interim basis and will all go through a rigorous accountability process to determine further disciplinary action.
Critics have claimed that Vanderbilt has abandoned its long-held commitment to free expression. They are wrong. Vanderbilt supports, teaches and defends free expression—but to do so, we must safeguard the environment for it. Students can advocate BDS. That is freedom of expression. But they can’t disrupt university operations during classes, in libraries or on construction sites. The university won’t adopt BDS principles. That’s institutional neutrality. As a community, we should always remember to treat each other with respect and rely on the force of the better argument. That’s civil discourse.
Teaching students the importance of upholding rules for free expression doesn’t squelch their right to voice their opinion—it protects it.
In these difficult times, each university will be tested. And each university will follow its own path. Our approach is clear: We clearly state the principles and rules that support our mission as a university. Then we enforce them.
Free expression is alive and well at Vanderbilt. Students who support the BDS movement, as well as those who oppose it, are protesting peacefully on campus as I write this. And during the same week when a handful of students stormed a building, others held thoughtful, candid and peaceful in-class discussions with both Michael Herzog, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., and Salam Fayyad, a former prime minister of the Palestinian Authority. Civil discourse in action.
Mr. Diermeier is chancellor of Vanderbilt University.
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