Vanderbilt University claims a commitment to free speech. But does it deliver?
A string of student demonstrations on Vanderbilt University’s campus over the past two weeks has caused a rift at the private university, with student and faculty concerns over their free speech rights at odds with university administration.
In late March, nearly fifty students descended on Kirkland Hall, the towering administration building in heart of Vanderbilt's campus, for a sit-in of Chancellor Daniel Deirmeier's office. The students were protesting the removal of a proposed amendment from a student ballot, which if approved would have prevented student government funds from going to certain businesses that support Israel.
Four students were arrested, with three of those expelled. Others who protested inside the building were either suspended or placed on disciplinary probation.
The university said that while it is committed to “free expression” and “civil discourse,” the students’ actions violated university policy and were “not peaceful,” citing the moment students pushed their way past a university employee to get into the administration building.
Vanderbilt University houses a First Amendment Center and the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy, in addition to a collaboration started last year with the global judicial think tank Justitia to create the Future of Free Speech project.
But the conflict — and the arrest of a reporter covering the protests — has been a blow to the public perception of the university as a place dedicated to free expression and free speech. A number of alumni and students, for instance, have expressed confusion over what they’re allowed to express on a campus.
Free speech concerns are a 'red herring,' says chancellor
In an interview with The Tennessean last week, Diermeier emphasized that free speech is “alive and well” on campus, and that calling concerns over the student demonstrations a “free-speech issue” was a “red herring.”
“I think the whole free speech angle is a total red herring,” he said. “It has nothing to do with the issues. We have plenty of opportunities for our students to engage with free speech without breaking fundamental university rules. So this was something else, and I'm not quite sure what they're trying to do. There was an attempt to occupy something — I don't know, maybe they have to explain what they were doing. That's their business. But from our point of view, our free speech, just like I said, is still alive and well.”
He said the decision to remove the student referendum — and the response to the subsequent demonstrations — could not count as a free speech issue because the university was abiding by state law.
“The funds that (student government) uses are university funds, not their money," he said. "So student government is subject to the Tennessee law, which prohibits boycott activities … We will not take that risk."
Diermeier said the response from the university supports the school’s dedication to “institutional neutrality,” and was fully in line with the school’s values.
“Crises often are opportunities to clarify to the world and to yourself what your values are,” he said. “Our response fit into that context — everything that we did there we believe was consistent with our purpose and our values.”
According to Vanderbilt policy, while demonstrations are allowed — along with media presence to cover the event — the private campus does, as a matter of policy, "define time, place and manner of limitations” for protests, and recently stated that it requires pre-approved clearance from administration for journalists to come on campus.
When asked if this media policy has ever been publicly accessible, Vanderbilt spokespeople confirmed that the policy "does not live online," as their practice has been to "share it with members of the media directly either by request or as needed."
University responses to demonstrations have not been consistent throughout Vanderbilt’s history. In 2015, a student group called the Hidden Dores held a similar protest, marching into Kirkland and handing petitions directly into the former chancellor’s hands.
No students were arrested, suspended or removed, and no reporters detained. The petitions led to multiple changes on campus, including the removal of the word Confederate from the title of Memorial Hall.
When asked what changed in student free expression standards between then and now, Diermeier said he would “need to look at the details” of the incident.
But Diermeier said he is concerned about the arrest of a Nashville Scene reporter covering the protests in late March. He said that was undoubtedly a First Amendment issue.
“It bothers me,” he said. “I want to know whether the arrest was an overreaction, or whether it was justified based on the policy, and if that's the case, whether or not we want to change the policies.”
No charges were filed against the reporter, who was quickly released from police custody.
The arrest drew heavy pushback from the community, including from 20 Metro Council members who signed a letter addressing the issue and urging the university to embody the free speech principles for which it promotes.
The university announced on April 4 the hiring of an outside attorney to review the arrest of the reporter and the campus media access policy.
When asked if the university has any intention of not pursuing the criminal charges against the three students, Diermeier said the question was "something that we would think about holistically," and that administration was "not at that point."
Outside of the university, Diermeier said that the reaction to the university’s actions were overwhelmingly positive following his published opinion column in the conservative editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal earlier in the week. The column did not mention the reporter's arrest.
But he noted that the response from faculty and students included “some criticisms, some concerns,” and was overall a “mixed response.”
“We're working through them,” he said. “We're trying to explain to people why we did what we did, and this particular op-ed piece was one way to do that. And there's going to have to be a continued conversation.”
Regardless of response, he said, the goal of the university has remained: institutional neutrality above all.
“The commitment to institutional neutrality is absolutely critical,” he said. “If you are constantly engaged in trying to figure out what the university's response should be to this foreign policy crisis or the other, you're encouraging lobbying to try and get the university on your side.”
Faculty, alumni raise concerns of 'arbitrary, shifting, and unevenly applied' standards
The responses from university faculty have been growing, even before the demonstrations began. Just days before the sit-in at Kirkland Hall, 34 faculty members expressed their support of the student group in their quest to return the referendum to the ballot.
Following the sit-in, a group of faculty released a second statement — with the number of signers jumping to 160 and counting.
“Over the past two weeks, the administration has responded to student protest in excessive and punitive ways, unduly restricting when, where, and how students can express themselves,” the new statement read. “We recognize that as a private entity, Vanderbilt has the latitude to set its own policies about free expression. But we are concerned that these rules seem arbitrary, shifting, and unevenly applied to student activists and other community members.”
The faculty statement urged the administration to “align its policies with its values regarding free speech, expression, and democratic activities, including protest.”
Carwil Bjork-James, a Vanderbilt University assistant professor of social movements, indigenous rights and political anthropology, signed the statement and said the move from Vanderbilt to remove the student vote was part of an ongoing pattern at the university.
“I think there is a larger pattern that it has been challenging for people on other issues — people working on divestment, addressing for-profit prison companies, etc. — to fully get their foot in the door or be given normal permission to protest on campus,” he said. “And there's been a tightening of those standards, ironically under the banner of free speech.”
The disconnect between the university’s public dedication to free speech policies and inward confusion of allowable expression is something noted by many Vanderbilt alumni who spoke out after the demonstrations.
Shawn Reilly, a Vanderbilt graduate who received both their undergraduate and two masters degrees from the university, was an active member of multiple social justice groups on campus, as well as an organizer of a similar sit-in at Kirkland Hall with a very different reception in 2016.
“I helped organize some actions at Vanderbilt regarding naming the campus a ‘sanctuary campus’ in 2016, when Trump had announced a registration for Muslim folks and potentially deporting undocumented folks,” Reilly said. “So we were able to do a sit-in at Kirkland. It lasted quite a few hours, with the demand that administration vote would agree to be a ‘sanctuary campus.’"
According to Reilly, students involved in that sit-in were treated very differently. They were allowed to have food delivered into the building and were allowed to use the restrooms — two things that students at the most recent demonstration were not allowed to do.
“There was not a hostile situation,” they said. “It couldn't be a more different story than what we saw happened at Vanderbilt last week.”
Reilly said the “free speech brand” that Vanderbilt has been promoting over the past few years doesn’t seem to align with the lived experiences of people trying to exercise those rights.
“We definitely felt that student protesters had more rights and support on campus previously than what I've seen in the last week," they said. "Especially given that our current chancellor is really trying to build this whole brand and carve the school out as a bastion of free expression.”
Expert: Vanderbilt responded fairly — but for the wrong reasons
Zach Greenberg, senior program officer of student organizations and campus rights advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said the situation at Vanderbilt was a “complex” one, where the university stands both in the right and wrong.
“Private universities are not bound by the First Amendment,” Greenberg said. “Public schools are of course legally required to uphold student’s free speech rights. Private universities, however, are only bound by the policies they make for their students in their official handbooks, though most private universities offer rights consistent with the First Amendment.”
More: These Tennessee universities made the top 100 for free speech rights, advocacy group finds
Based on this, Greenberg said that the school’s response to the demonstrators was correct—but based on bad reasoning.
“We’re still investigating the situation,” he said. “But to our understanding right now, Vanderbilt did the right thing. They punished students who were disrupting campus, who were violating content-neutral place-and-time restrictions—which are permissible under First Amendment restrictions—and they were doing so to preserve the safety of their campus.”
The reasoning for the demonstrations and their subsequent fallout are another story, however.
“The student referendum issue is a different case,” he said. “Based on what we’ve seen with that, we feel that it was cancelled out of the university’s misinterpretation of state and federal law regarding boycotting institutions. The expression of the student amendment is protected free speech, and the university’s rationale for cancelling it does not hold water for many reasons.”
Primarily, Greenberg said, Vanderbilt is a private university. So the very reasons it could restrict student speech are the very reasons the boycott laws do not apply to the private school’s speech.
“The state and federal laws about boycotting Israel do not apply to them or the student government,” Greenberg said. “We’ve researched the laws in this case, and we do not see how it applies in this scenario, and we plan on alerting the general counsel’s office and administration of this misinterpretation to ensure that they do not censor more speech.”
Greenberg said the situation at Vanderbilt is highly unsurprising—and likely to repeat again.
“These free speech issues are pretty common right now,” he said. “Schools across the country are dealing with issues on the Israel/Hamas war. It’s really a trying time for universities in upholding free speech, and we applaud Vanderbilt for trying to work with us to improve their climate, but there’s still a long way to go.
“Universities can have the best policies ever, but they need to be applied peacefully and fairly.”
The USA Today Network - Tennessee's coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners.
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This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Vanderbilt touts free speech. Israel protest, media arrest muddy image
