Resist or Reform? Vanderbilt’s Chancellor Speaks Out

Relevant Links

“Live from Milken: One-on-One with Bill Ackman,” preview Future U episode.

“Arizona State’s President Is Pulling Out All the Stops to Get on Trump’s Good Side,” in The New York Times.

“The Elite-University Presidents Who Despise One Another,” in The Atlantic.

“The (Not So) Quiet Schism Among Academic Leaders,” in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

“College-Age Jews Are Heading South,” in The Atlantic.

Chapters

0:00 - Introduction

2:07 - Why Vanderbilt’s Chancellor Stands Out in This Moment

4:46 - Is Vanderbilt Trying to Beat the Ivies?

7:23 - Why Vanderbilt Chose Dialogue With Trump Administration

10:06 - Did Higher Ed Get Too Comfortable?

11:12 - Are Higher Ed Institutions Up to the Challenge of Responding to Trump?

15:22 - What Daniel Diermeier Sees As Most Needed Reform for Higher Ed

17:40 - Will 'Resistance" by Colleges Hurt Federal Funding Broadly?

21:48 - Could the U.S. Lose the Lead In Higher Ed?

23:25 - Why Jewish Students are Flocking to Vanderbilt - 

26:58 - A Plan for Expansion to Other Cities

29:03 - Sponsor Break 

29:43 - Is Trump the Symptom or Cause of Higher Ed’s Challenges?

34:37 - A Rift Over How to Respond to Skepticism of College

37:40 - How Could the Research Process Be Reformed?

39:41 - The Fallout from October 7 Protests

43:40 - The Challenge of Political Diversity on Campus

49:37 - Can a New Group of Campuses Unseat the Ivy League?

52:06 - The Role of College Athletics in Campus Prestige

53:06 - A Regional Shift in Prominence

57:55 - Lightning Round With Daniel Diermeier

Transcript

Bill Ackman

The only way Harvard has grown is by raising the price of the service it offers. A business that's only grown by raising price, that hasn't delivered more service, and the quality of the service has gone down is an institution in need of major change. And, you know, I've seen some great examples. We had the president of Dartmouth on the panel. I think they're doing a very good job. I've recently spent some time touring the Vanderbilt campus, and a very talented, thoughtful leader running the campus.

Jeff Selingo

That was from my interview with investor and Harvard alum and critic, Bill Ackman on the stage at the Milken Global Institute last spring. As you know, it was also an episode of Future U that you can find in our archives. 

But you heard Ackman name-check the president of Vanderbilt there as someone he thinks is talented and thoughtful. And Michael, he went on to say that universities that focus on teaching and research will be those that thrive in the future.

Michael Horn

And Jeff, with that in mind, we decided to invite the chancellor of Vanderbilt today on the show. That's chancellor Daniel Diermeier, who has been at the center of the debate over how much higher ed should resist the Trump administration and how much colleges are to blame for the turmoil facing the sector right now. 

That's all on this episode of Future U.

Sponsor

This episode of Future U is sponsored by Ascendium, a mission-driven nonprofit committed to improving learning and training systems to better serve learners from low-income backgrounds. For more information, visit ascendiumphilanthropy.org. 

Subscribe to Future U wherever you get your podcasts. And if you enjoy the show, share it with your friends so others can discover the conversations we're having about higher education.

Jeff Selingo

I'm Jeff Selingo.

Michael Horn

And I'm Michael Horn.

Jeff Selingo

So, Michael, right after I got back from LA last May when I did that interview with Bill Ackman, I called up Daniel Deremier at Vandy and said, you know what? You were just name-checked by someone who was hated by several elite presidents in higher ed. You know? What do you think of that? 

And that's when he first told me that higher ed isn't blameless for what is a declining trust and value in the sector. And that has really led the Trump administration, as we know, to put a bull's eye on the back of higher ed. Because in many ways, the administration knows it's picking a fight with a sector that isn't all that popular with the American public.

Michael Horn

Yeah. And what's interesting here, Jeff, is that we've been seeing all these stories about the rise of Southern higher ed. You've written some of this. Right? Of course. And most of those stories are focused on public flagship universities. I think of University of Alabama, for example, from your book. 

But here is Vanderbilt, a private research university in a city that has become much larger on the national scene thinking that Vanderbilt, you know, they think that they could and should be mentioned more often in the same breath with Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford.

Jeff Selingo

And probably the University of Chicago because that's where  Diermeier was the provost before arriving at Vanderbilt in 2019. You know, he has built a long academic career as a political scientist and management scholar with a particular focus on trust, reputation, and how institutions respond under pressure — you know, themes that have become incredibly relevant in this moment, Michael.

Michael Horn

Yeah. It's a cool combination of his academic interests and his leadership position coming together for this show. 

And so we wanted to have Daniel precisely because Vanderbilt really has emerged as something of a counter-narrative in the higher ed sector at the moment. 

It's been praised by some high-profile observers for how it's handled polarization, free expression, campus culture. And at the same time, the university, get this:  It's expanding, not contracting, with new initiatives in New York City, West Palm Beach, and potentially San Francisco.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. And so today, we're gonna dig into what Daniel Diermeier thinks is a great 21st-century research university. What it should look like, you know, how Vanderbilt is approaching its relationship with the federal government and the public at large, and why he believes neutrality, civil discourse, and clarity of purpose are essential for higher ed's future. 

Daniel, welcome to Future U.

Daniel Diermeier

Well, thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

Jeff Selingo

So, Daniel, you know, earlier this year, as you know, because I called you after this happened, I interviewed the higher ed activist Bill Ackman on the stage at the Milken Global Institute in LA. And near the end of the interview, something very interesting happened because he mentioned several universities that he thought were navigating this kind of politically fraught moment the right way. And he included Vanderbilt in that list. 

And it seems that as I go around the country now talking about my new book, that Vandy is being seen as this kind of modern version of the modern private elite research university, perhaps one that could knock the Northeast Ivies from their perch at the top. 

Is that a framing of Vanderbilt that you kind of agree with, and is it something that you're trying to promote?

Daniel Diermeier

Well, I think what we're trying to do is we're trying to define what the great university of the 21st-century is and what it should be, and then we want to instantiate it, we want to be that. And there are a couple of dimensions to that. 

I think one dimension that you mentioned and that may have come up in the interview as well is we do believe that some universities — many universities — have kind of lost their way a little bit in terms of what their core purpose is. And we're trying to be crystal clear on what that is. We try to communicate it, try to act accordingly, and then we talk about it. So, I think this is an important part because things are not in great shape in higher education and so we want to be an example for that. 

We have the highest respect for the great American research universities, but we also want to compete with them. Whether that's now on the football field or whether that's for students or talent, we certainly have a sense that we are proud of what we've accomplished. But we're not satisfied, either.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. By the way, congratulations on a great season there for Vandy. 

Well, so I wanna just dive a little bit deeper into this because The Wall Street Journal had this piece recently, and there was a line in it that really caught my eye. It said elite universities have met Trump's campaign to remake higher education with “distress and resistance.” And I think those two words really do describe when I talk to a lot of higher ed leaders, this idea of distress and and resistance. 

Now this article was about Arizona State, where as you know, I'm a special adviser. It's one university out there, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out, that is trying to work with the White House and serve as a model in this Trump era. 

Now Vanderbilt, of course, is among the universities that have neither accepted or rejected the compact, the higher ed compact from the administration. You said you're engaging in dialogue. What is that dialogue about? What does that look like?

Daniel Diermeier

Well, I think the important part of that is that, you know, when this whole story with the compact started, the fellow administration reached out to about eight universities and basically said, ‘Here's a draft of what we think universities should do. We think it's a good draft. Do you want to comment on it?’ So we were never asked to sign, we were never kind of put like a, ‘Sign or else!’ We were asked to comment. 

And whenever we make a decision, we try to make the decision, we try to focus on the decision we actually have to make, and the decision we had to make was are we going to participate in dialogue, Yes or No? 

Now, we're kind of the dialogue people, you know, dialogue Vanderbilt is what we do day-to-day on campus. We have great relationships with our mayor, with our governor, with our federal delegation, with the federal government. So we like engagement. We've done this in many, many different ways. We've done it during the endowment tax, we've done it with the Department of Education, a whole variety of issues. So when we have an opportunity to have conversations with important policymakers, we participate and we engage. 

So, the whole drama around that, I think, was overblown, and I think was in some sense triggered by what I thought was inaccurate media coverage.

Jeff Selingo

That's interesting. So this idea that even engaging in conversation on some campuses felt like institutions were kind of like giving in. Right? They weren't playing that resistance card. 

And your feeling is, ‘We might as well engage in the conversation because whatever is gonna happen is gonna happen, and we might as well make it better.’ Correct?

Daniel Diermeier

I don't like this whole resistance narrative in the first place. 

I think that, you know, there are real challenges that higher education has had for many years. There's a significant erosion of trust that we see across the board. You know, the Gallup survey is probably one of the most prominent pieces of evidence of that. There are things that need to be fixed, there are things that need to be addressed, and we should have done this years ago. And, you know, to conceptualize everything now in this kind of conflict with the Trump administration, I don't think it's a particularly productive way to deal with the issue because there are things in higher education that need to be addressed. They needed to be addressed under the Biden administration, they needed to be addressed under the first Trump administration and even before that. So I think that it's important that we focus on the issues and don't get caught up in the politics all the time.

Jeff Selingo

Okay. Do you feel like higher ed maybe just became too comfortable with its relationship with the federal government over the last, you know, four, five, six decades?

Daniel Diermeier

I think higher education became too comfortable, period. I think there was a sense of complacency, I think there was a sense of not focusing on important issues, of like, you know, kind of waiting things out. And the relationship with the federal government was one component of that. 

I think the criticism of higher education is not new. There are issues that come from the left, issues that come from the right. In this current moment most of the attacks are coming from the right, from the conservative side, but of course this is the current moment and this is just the current issues that are in front of us. 

So for us, we have to realize that we have a mission. We have a core purpose. We need to stay true to that mission, and then we need to address and manage and engage with the political environment that is consistent with that approach.

Michael Horn

Daniel, I wanna stay with this, some of the media narratives that have come out and give you the opportunity to talk about it, but maybe broaden the scope a little bit. 

There is obviously this Atlantic article, this past fall which highlighted a divide among presidents, in the Association of American Universities, the AAU. And it centered on you and Andrew Martin, of course, of Washington University in Saint Louis. And the article said the two of you were essentially advocating for recognizing higher ed's issues and issuing, quote, in their words, a kind of 'voluntary modified dewokeification.' 

Then you pushed back on that narrative, right, in an interview with The Chronicle. And that said, there still seems to be some tension with the AAU according to other reporting as well. And you've helped bring together this group, Universities for America's Future, which you've explicitly said is not a competitor to the AAU. 

But I'm curious if you think more broadly if higher ed associations, the ones that we've had over these last few decades, are up to the job for advocating for reform of the sector and to get rid of that complacency that you alluded to?

Daniel Diermeier

Yeah. So the first comment is, you know, the Atlantic article was very colorful in its language. You know, we respect each other. You know, Chris Eisgruber and I respect each other. We have a cordial relationship, but we have real disagreements. And I think these real disagreements are not new. 

Andrew Martin and I published a set of statements, well, a little over a year ago, where we basically pointed out that we believed that universities had drifted from their core purpose and needed to commit to the core values and the core principle that sustained that purpose.

There's another group, and Chris Eisgruber is one of the members of that, which says basically things are fine at the university level, and the real problem is the attack from the political right. 

We believe that, number one, the American research university is a fantastic thing, and we have not done a great job in articulating the value to the American public in a sufficient degree, but that there are things that need to be addressed mostly around the political drift of universities, and we need to do the work. And that's complicated and hard work and that work needs to be led by universities. So that's the context. 

Now, the AAU plays a very important role for us, I mean as a forum of course, but also as an advocacy group particularly around issues of research funding or financial aid —  things that really affect all members of the AAU in important ways. And they do this all the time, they do it well, they're of course right now engaged on questions of research funding in general, indirects, all of that. I think that's great. 

On the issues of purpose and reform of higher education, the AAU is much, much more complicated because you have red-state public universities, you have blue-state public universities, you have private universities, and the presidents on those issues on what are the core underlying problems and what to do about them are not aligned. So it's not a surprise that the AAU has difficulties, then, leading that effort because its members do not share a common point of view on that. 

That's why we have been active in having conversations always in partnership with the AAU. So AAU knows that we're doing that and Barbara Snyder, the president, is participating in these events frequently. That we wanted to see, you know, is there a group of presidents and chairs that are interested in thinking through what needs to be done and then perhaps coordinate on some kind of common approaches and that we had a meeting in Dallas a little over a year ago where we had, I think it was more than 50 university  presidents and board chairs there do that. 

So there's a small group of universities that agree that there's a problem and want to sharpen our analysis of that, and wanna think about what what we can do individually and what we can do in partnership with others.

Michael Horn

Yeah. So you've mentioned this, you know, understanding the purpose of the university, core values, core principles. I'd love you to get specific about what the reform should look like in your mind. In, you know, thinking about this, obviously, it's a much longer set of reforms. 

But just as we sort of boil it into a few sentences, if you will, what are the changes that are really most needed to bring universities back to those core values and core principles in your mind?

Daniel Diermeier

Yeah. The main focus needs to be on having universities committed to their core purpose and stop doing things that are not connected to their purpose. 

So what is the core purpose for a great research university? It is to do path-breaking research and transformative education. We're not a political party. We're not joining a political movement. That is not our job. And people that want to do that should do that, but as long as they're in the university, they're engaged in the creation of knowledge and teaching and, you know, conveying that knowledge to each other, to students, and to the general public. That's what we do. 

And there are multiple examples where we have deviated from that purpose. That happens at the university level, it happens at the level of individual faculty, and it happens at the level of professional associations. 

It is, from my point of view, inappropriate for universities to take political positions on issues that do not directly affect their core purpose such as foreign policy. We call that ‘institutional neutrality,’ and we think that's an important thing that universities need to adopt. They have not done it over many years. Now in response to October 7 we had almost 140 universities kind of adopting that now.

But I think that's just the tip of the iceberg. There are questions about professional associations. There are questions about the erosion of scholarly standards by political activism. That is a multifaceted problem and I think we need to acknowledge it and we need to make sure that we're clear about what the purpose are and act accordingly.

Jeff Selingo

But Daniel, that line is sometimes fuzzy, isn't it? Because the federal government and colleges and universities, especially the big research universities, have been kind of joined at the hip, especially, you know, post-World War II. 

I mean, you know, higher education in general and particularly the research universities are heavily dependent in a lot of ways on the on the federal government, and we know that this hasn't been a great year. Right? There's been loss of federal funding. There's been changes to federal loans out of the Big Beautiful Bill. There was a decline in international students, some of which could be tied directly to administration policy. 

So I'm kind of interested, first of all,  you know, what is the impact of at Vanderbilt of all this? And are you worried at all about the financial implications of some of your counterparts trying to kind of resist the federal government at a time when higher education really needs them?

Daniel Diermeier

You're 100% right that we are heavily funded and supported by the federal government. That is true on the research funding. That is true on financial aid for students,. That is an enormously important thing that the federal government does. It has tremendous benefits for the American public. For every dollar invested in the research enterprise, in the research enterprise at universities, the American public gets $5 back. It's a great system. The system that was created after WWII by Vannevar Bush is one of the, maybe the key ingredient for the science and innovation leadership of this country. So that is a wonderful thing that needs to be supported and needs to be protected. 

I think the problem right now is that we have lost so much trust and so much support among the American public that for politicians, if they want to represent on their view they're representing the American public or for political reasons, we're a good target now. We're a good target because people think we have drifted to the left, there's political bias on campus. That's the problem with the conservative side. And on the other side, the left thinks we're elitist. 

So that is not a good position to be in if a very important part of your operating model depends on federal support, which is the reason why we need to fix this. We need to fix this, and then we need to be able to communicate it directly. 

We directly at Vanderbilt have not been deeply affected by the funding issues, more the general things that have been going on, but it's very serious for the individual researchers, but we were able to support them during that period. I would say that ...

Jeff Selingo

But is this a longer … I mean, do you worry about the longer tail of this? And, like, what does the future research university look like?

Daniel Diermeier

I am not as worried...

Jeff Selingo

Is it gonna continue to be dependent on the federal government?

Daniel Diermeier

That, I think there's no no way around that. I think we're gonna have to look for alternative funding sources for sure.

Jeff Selingo

And you think the federal government will continue to be core?

Daniel Diermeier

Yes I'm much less pessimistic than other people. And it's just great public policy. It's fantastic public policy with great returns, with tremendous benefits for anything from, you know, medical breakthroughs to national security to economic prosperity and competitiveness. That is the heart of the innovation economy and if you look at it in detail, it's obvious, but we're not explaining that clearly enough. 

So for the federal government that wants to stimulate innovation, that is where economic competitiveness with China is a core policy, and I'm not talking just Republicans or Democrats, that is bipartisan. You have to invest in research, but you have to invest... But to do that you have to trust the people you invest in, that they're actually doing what they're supposed to be doing, which is to be engaged in knowledge creation and educating the leaders, the next generation of leaders in this country, and then not taking sides in the political battles. That to me is the core issues.

Jeff Selingo

So do you worry at all? You brought up China, for example. You know, you've been educated both at American and German institutions. Do you worry about this moment? You know, American supremacy on higher ed has been, you know, long and deep. Do you worry at all about, this moment where other countries, and particularly China, could take over on that front?

Daniel Diermeier

I mean, you have to worry about China and what's going on in other countries, but particularly China. There's a tremendous investment in research capabilities. It's very strategic. It's very clearly targeted from the point of view of economic competitiveness and national security. You have to worry about it. So my sense is if we stick to what is working and we are clear about our purpose, why are we doing it, there's broad consensus on that, and it's this great public policy. If we get stuck in these, you know, partisan or political battles over this or that or the other, then I'm worried. So I'm not worried about the system, you know, the systemic aspects. I think this is still the greatest model of research funding and innovation in the world. I am worried that we are unable to find common ground to make sure that we really understand what this model is all about, what its key components are, and that we support them rather than erode them.

Michael Horn

I want to stay on the topic of political footballs, if you will, but switch a little bit the sort of the angle of that, if you will, and just focus actually on the wave of anti-Israel campus activism and some of the incidents of antisemitism that we've seen largely at a small number of hyper-selective, schools, of course. And the result, has been a population of Jewish undergraduates at Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, University of Pennsylvania, for example, shrinking by 3% to 5% in the last few years. And according to data gathered by Hillel, the national, Jewish Student Organization, and we've seen that many of these students are starting to flock to institutions like Vanderbilt.

Daniel Diermeier

Mhmm.

Michael Horn

What are you doing to be seen as more welcoming to Jewish students in particular against this backdrop? We're seeing the same trend. We're seeing a significant rise in interest, increased interest from Jewish families, particularly from the Northeast, but also California, other parts of the country. 

We were on, or I was personally, we were on an adventure, we received two awards recently a few months ago. One was the Lamplighter Award by Chabad International and then what's called the White Rose Society Award by the White Rose Society for our work in supporting Jewish students during a time of tremendous difficulty and tremendous need after October 7. And I'll just do a little anecdote because Jeff mentioned my German background. The White Rose Society Award is named after a group of German students that in 1942 protested the Nazis by throwing out leaflets and distributing in the university. They were all caught and executed. That's the university where I was as an undergraduate. So I know their names, I know where it happened when I walked to class, that was the atrium where they had thrown down their leaflets. So this is very meaningful to me personally.

But what we have done at Vanderbilt is basically two things. 

One is we are going to support every member of our community to thrive, and that's number one. 

Number two, we have a clear commitment to civil discourse, free speech and institutional neutrality, civil discourse the most relevant in this case, which means that we have a culture on campus and we work very hard in creating that culture that all members of our community remember that they came to Vanderbilt to be part of a living learning community, that they treat each other with respect, that they listen, that they have arguments, they use fact-based reasoning, they're willing to be convinced. 

We're not about demonizing each other, we're not about ostracizing each other, we're not about screaming at each other. So that culture we work hard on creating and making, you know, that's kind of second nature to our students now, and so I think we're less vulnerable to the type of discord that's happening at many other universities. 

And then when there were issues like that, they were small but they were there, we acted in a way that the principles of free speech and free expression were enforced. And when students violated that, we disciplined the students. And I think  all three things were missing in different degrees at other universities. 

So the clarity of principle, communicating, acting when you have to, but with courage, I think was a critical thing and that is now being recognized across the country. One way in which we're seeing this directly manifesting itself is with the increased applications by Jewish students and their families. Yeah. So it's following on. 

Michael Horn

One other question in terms of campus as we start to wrap up the conversation with you, which is Vanderbilt is planning a new graduate campus in West Palm Beach, Florida. You've also started the new campus in New York City. This is a lot of expansion at a time where higher ed is not necessarily, in an expansionary mode across the country. Tell us the logic for these new campuses when so much else is also going online. Do you imagine more outposts in the future? Sort of paint the opportunity and strategic purpose of these.

Daniel Diermeier

Sure. So the first thing is we're in great financial shape. We were one of the few universities, maybe the only one in our peer group, that didn't have any layoffs or didn't stop PhD admissions, didn't stop capital projects and so forth. So we're in good shape financially. 

What we're doing there is really driven by the following concept or the following idea: Innovation is local. And innovation really happens and economic opportunity happens when there is synergy between a university and an ecosystem where the university is part of. I was at Stanford from '94 to '97, that's when magic was created there, and it was just that. It was a great research university and a great community, they were complementary and they were permeable. 

Now then, once you believe that, it matters where you are. And there are many wonderful things that we can do in Nashville, and we're doing them and we're fully engaged here. But other communities have assets that will allow us to do great work in those particular domains. We have a campus in New York, lots of opportunities there, and we're also looking at a campus in West Palm Beach and we're exploring San Francisco as well because we believe that those communities have specific assets that would allow us to create wonderful local innovation systems that would be complementary to what we're doing in Nashville right now.

Michael Horn

It's exciting to watch. Daniel, just a huge thank you for joining us on Future U, and we'll be right back.

Daniel Diermeier

Thank you.

Sponsor

This episode of Future U is sponsored by Ascendium, a mission-driven nonprofit committed to improving learning and training systems to better serve learners from low-income backgrounds. Ascendium envisions a world where low-income learners succeed in postsecondary education and workforce training as paths to upward mobility. Ascendium's grantees are removing systemic barriers and helping to build evidence about what works so learners can achieve their career goals. For more information, visit ascendiumphilanthropy.org.

Jeff Seling

Welcome back to Future U, Michael. 

And that was quite a conversation with the Vanderbilt chancellor, Daniel Diermeier. And I wanna dive right into some of the themes he raised because they kinda go right to the heart of what I think the sector of higher ed is struggling with right now. 

So let's start with this idea that he kept returning to, that universities have drifted from their core purpose and that the reaction to the political moment, especially under the Trump administration, is partly because campuses don't really know what they stand for anymore. You know, Michael, you made the point that selective campuses were almost destined to react the way they did. So let's pick up on that.

Michael Horn

Yeah. Happy to. But maybe let me step back a little bit and say, I think part of the question that's being asked, right, is, 'Is Trump the symptom of higher ed's challenges, or is Trump the cause of higher ed's challenges?'  Right? 

And I think Daniel is saying, in many ways, he's the symptom. He's not the cause. Right? 

And that there were these big structural issues, and now Trump is bringing them to the forefront. And I don't think even Daniel is saying that much. It's just like these are big structural issues we should be dealing with. Trump happens to be talking about them. We're going to engage. 

Now to be clear, you know, Jeff, I'm not defending how this administration has gone about the 'how' of its work, and I think listeners have clearly heard that. But at the same time, I think the challenge in the in the dialogue right now is we haven't had Daniel's perspective. We're like, 'Hey. Yes. There's this stuff going on here in the federal government, but, like, let's not take away from the fact that there are serious problems right now that higher ed has.' 

And I think, you know, someone could push back and say, well, ‘But look at the elites. They have huge demand, right, for seats. So maybe the market is speaking. It's not all that bad.’ But I think one thing that it misses is that taxpayers are fundamentally underwriting the research that a lot of these institutions that are on the selective end do, and the lever there is the federal government. Right? And there are serious questions at this point about what taxpayers are funding in some cases. 

And I think that's sort of where the outgrowth of a lot of this anger and sort of leverage, if you will, on the system from the Trump folks has come.

Now Daniel made a clear case for the positives. Like, it's a good deal for America. Research is a good deal for taxpayers. I think you and I both fundamentally do believe that. 

But there are some big challenges. And I think, like, you can't keep masking over that. Like, look at research, the replication crisis we keep hearing about or, you know, recalls in major scientific journals, right, around, environment. We now find out that the coral coverage of the Great Barrier Reef is actually larger than it's been in 36 years. Like, stuff like that. Right? 

And so ... This is not to undermine all researchers or research. I just think that it's not working as well as it could, it seems from the outside. 

And it could be, Jeff, that in some ways, like, this peer review process is fundamentally somewhat broken and is emphasizing the star individual as opposed to, like, 'Hey, could I get credit for producing great research that reproduces something or shows the anomalies or constraints to a finding?' Maybe that should get rewarded in some way. I think there needs to be a set of conversations around that. But I think what the American public is seeing is a lot of the politicization of that.

Second point, politicization of, like, the endowments. Right? With the BDS, Israel boycott, movement and sanctions right around Israel or, in oil and gas companies, right, against that or firearms companies. Right? We've seen a lot of efforts to take endowments and make them a pawn in a larger political conversation. 

And then I'll actually answer your question because I think, you know, Diermeier's right in many ways that obviously, you know, because this is happening during the whirlwind and the headline-seeking that is the Trump administration, in some ways because the selective campuses have become so leftward in the makeup of faculty and staff, let's just call it what it is, it almost didn't matter what was said or how it was said. And the, again, the extremes that it was said with, I think they were going to react negatively and view any conversation as a nonstarter in some ways. Right? 

It's like this notion of the resistance as opposed to, 'Wow. We have some challenges. We don't think this is the right way to approach it. Let's have a reasoned conversation about how we create something new that actually does research and does the purpose of the university much better.' Because I think we'd all benefit from that independent of this political political craziness we're in.

Jeff Selingo

Yep. Michael, what's interesting to me about all of this is that higher ed claims to be this bastion of free speech and free thought and debate and critical thinking, but they don't even bring it to their own club. Right? 

You know, higher ed is in many ways a club. You know, people talk about higher ed as being collegial. It's funny, Michael, when I was back at The Chronicle of Higher Education, and we were trying to come up with a name for a new product around a kind of a professional networking site. One of the names was collegial, andD we kinda tested that with a number of people. And people kept coming back to us and said, no. There is like, it's knives out here, right, in higher ed. And they were mostly talking about the faculty, but I even think that's true among presidents. 

And here's a president, here's a chancellor in Daniel Diermeier, who's kind of fighting the clubbingness of higher ed in a little way. Right? You know, he kind of downplayed, I think, quote, unquote, this rift within the AAU. I think it is there a little bit more than everyone cares to admit it because I don't think they really do have a path forward. I don't think they really have a strategy to kind of fight back what's happening in Washington right now. And I think a lot of this has become about Trump. But there are these larger issues that I think are ripe for discussion and that I think presidents like Diermeier are saying, 'We've lost the support of the public because we're not doing this well, and we have to admit to that. We have to admit to that problem.' And there's other presidents who say, 'No. We have to kinda keep this gravy train from the federal government going.' 

And so that section, with him, that discussion about the AAU divide was kinda fascinating to me because as he said, you know, these big associations can't, in many ways, lead reform because the members don't agree on the problem. You have some members saying we need to fight the administration on this. You have other members saying, ‘Maybe we will get the trust of the public back if we admit that we could do some of this stuff better.’ But what does that really say about the state of the sector right now that they can't agree on what the problem is? 

And in fact, he even said that the resistance narrative is unhelpful. And I continue to question whether any of the associations are really up to the task right now of not only working with and lobbying the federal government, because I think their influence among congress, some in the halls of congress, in the White House, have been diminished so much. And I'm sure we'll hear from the CEOs of those associations in about ten minutes after this episode drops.

Michael Horn

Well they can come on.

Jeff Selingo

What's interesting to me, Michael, is even in the association, you can't even get agreement among the presidents about what the problem is. 

And so to me, this is a real identity crisis. And when presidents like Diermeier speak up, they get criticized because you're not supposed to kind of criticize the club that you belong to.

Michael Horn

Yeah. It's a good point. 

I mean, just briefly on this, I would love to see — outside of the political process that's going on in the circus there — I would love to see some not just presidents, frankly, but, like, research faculty, right, who can see the problems with research and how it could be done better. Like, let's see some good-faith alternative proposals for how it could be done differently, for how you think about the makeup of your faculty, how you think about not ideological diversity along right-left. But, you know, a greater set of ideas to, you know, to really go down different paths that create breakthroughs for humanity. I think that'd be really interesting.

And I think the peer review process that served us quite well at this point, there's so much stuff coming on. Peer review takes forever. The journal articles get barely read. We know there are all the challenges I mentioned upfront. No wonder if people can barely, you know, do their job and stuff like that. It calls for a bigger sort of creative rethinking of what the roles engaged in research are, and maybe not just getting credit for, 'Wow, you had the breakthrough that turned heads.' But, like, 'You contributed to a set of breakthroughs.' And through that contribution of knowledge, it frankly would be a more collegial set of relationships, I think, and an interesting body of research we could then teach to students. 

And it wouldn't be just like, 'Oh, Jeff, you got so and so to school of economics thought, I got this one.' Instead, we'd sort of be building a set of ... a body of ideas together even if they had disparate parts of them or places where circumstances meant, you know, there were different philosophies.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. But, I mean, at the end of the day, Michael, you know, having these opponents or people who think differently within the academy, they're so few and far between. It's why people always say, well, you have only six or seven presidents a year or a season on Future U, if that, we maybe only have one or two, because there's so few of them that are thinking in different ways like this. 

So I wanna move on to another theme that came up in our conversation with the chancellor, and that's Jewish students, Michael. 

You know, Diermeier made headlines this past year for how Vanderbilt handled the post-October 7 climate on colleges now going back a couple of years. You know, he mentioned in our interview, it was also the subject of an Atlantic piece about the surge in applications they're seeing, especially from the Northeast. Michael, you said something really interesting. What resonated wasn't special treatment, but something just much simpler.

Michael Horn

Yeah. I mean, look, on Jewish students, you know that personally, I appreciated his comments. And yet, to me, I thought the biggest thing is he when he said, ‘We should be treating everyone with respect.’ And so it's not a set of, like, let's create Jewish students as a protected class or something like that. But how should we treat each individual, regardless of background? Sort of a Golden Rule, right, idea there. 

And I don't know that I have much more to say than that except just that what I think I would hate that came out of this moment, Jeff, of October 7 and the reactions to it, is that we have just one more group you're not allowed to, you know, you have to treat with kid gloves and you can't sort of have an honest conversation about, if that makes sense. 

As opposed to, like, 'How do we instill respect and real dialogue and debate and not do it in an animosity, like, let's go to the knives and protest sort of way, but just basic conversation around areas of difference and things like that?' I think it would be a healthier role for higher ed in society as well and a better way to treat individuals with respect.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah, Michael. And I really do think that many of the elite universities, and I think at the Washington Monthly we had this discussion last year and, in Future U. You know, Washington Monthly showed how many institutions were really where there were big protests and things like that. As we know, there's very few of them overall, but I think those institutions, you know, many of the elite, many of the big brand-name institutions in the country really underestimated how badly damaged their reputations were among certain groups. 

I will tell you, as I've been out on the road the last couple of weeks, there are a series of questions I just get at every stop, and one of them is around this idea of safety, and ‘How will I know that my kids will be safe?’ 

Now people define safety in many different ways. We often, I think, think of it as physical safety, and that's an issue here, but it is safe to express ideas and discussion without being closed down. And I think that is something that keeps coming up. 

And I, you know, we don't see it in the numbers yet in terms of enrollment, but I think some of these subtle shifts in terms of what we saw with the number of Jewish students, for example, going south, they might be subtle, but over time, they do grow into something much bigger. 

And I think that the elite universities are underestimating just how badly their reputations were damaged in these last couple of years.

Michael Horn

You did something interesting there, Jeff, really quick. Right? Like, safety has been thought of, safety from having my feelings hurt. You just said safety for being able to express myself even when the points disagree. That's a big flip. I think it's a very important one you just made. 

And I will tell you, you know, I was this morning before recording, I was meeting with a Head of School nearby. I was struck by how many she said, you know, Harvard's not that popular at the moment. It was very interesting to me. 

She was telling me the schools that were, and she was saying because they've handled these things much better in her estimation in terms of the dialogue and openness to conversation as opposed to just sort of polarized, protest against a group of students.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. And people are paying attention to this. 

Now I will tell you that others are thinking, 'Oh, it's gonna be now easier to get into Harvard or Yale or Princeton.' Right? People thinking that part of it as well. 

By the way, again, I think these will be changes around the margins. I don't think it's gonna be that much easier. 

But, Michael, one other topic I wanted to unpack, and I wish we ended up spending even more time on this with Daniel, and that is this kind of fuzzy line between teaching, dialoguing, and just kind of really being politicking in the classroom. 

And you flagged this as a real tension in the conversation. You know, how do you see it?

Michael Horn

Yeah. Well, first, I'm glad you asked the question about the fuzzy line because I thought it could have skated by, right, with just sort of leaving it at a surface level. 

I will say I agree with Daniel where I do think there's some simple bright lines of central administration should not be making statements on everything and should not be expected, shouldn't be using the endowment for political purposes, etc, etc. Like, there's some simple things I think that neutrality can mean there. 

Where I think there's a fuzzy line is like platforming versus actually exposing people to real differences of opinion, for example, right, and real debate. You might bring in a speaker who represents a pretty radical viewpoint on any side, and sometimes that's part of, you know, exposing people to difficult conversations and thinking through something. Right? 

And so, you know, where is it dialogue as part of the teaching process? Where is it proselytizing and sort of brainwashing? That seems to me to be a bit of a fuzzy line, Jeff, that people don't really wanna get into. 

I'll give you a second one that seems like one, which is there's the tensions often, and you hear this a lot at Harvard, which is they'll say, 'Oh, the centers without tenured faculty are the places with the most extreme views that are creating platforms for the worst actors, etc, etc.' And they haven't gone through the tenure process to create, like, sort of rigorous thought around this, you know, academic strain of research, etc, etc. And so if if if we just brought more of that into the process, then we wouldn't have this. 

And on the one hand, you say, 'Okay. I like, I buy that.' But on the other hand, right, you're like, well, but there's a lot of problems with tenure as well.

Jeff Selingo

I mean the tenure process has led us to this point, hasn't it?

Michael Horn

Right, I mean tenure has not created an ideological diverse faculty.

Jeff Selingo

People basically tenure people they agree with more than anything.

Michael Horn

Exactly. Right? And journals, etc, etc. 

So it's like, it's not obvious to me how you fix this with that framing, but I do think we have to have a little bit more of a ... I don't think we wanna be bean counting. Oh, did you get everyone you know, did we get around the three sixty degrees of every single issue or idea around a certain issue represented? Did we get the right balance of that 360 degrees? Like, I don't think that's the world in which we want to live. And yet, there is a problem, right, of these, you know, certain outposts at universities that are not really having conversations, but more proselytizing than teaching. 

And so it's not odd like, that seems like a fuzzy line to me at least, Jeff.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. And my I guess my concern, Michael, is that we see this as a fuzzy line that should be debated. These are tough problems to discuss and debate and try to figure out. Right? The little bit of discernment that comes, I think, that higher ed does very well. 

But the public doesn't necessarily believe in that, and particularly lawmakers don't necessarily believe in that. Right? We've seen so many incidents in the last couple of months of professors being fired and, you know, headlines around students getting F's because of how they cited stuff in papers and things like that. Like, everyone else sees a bright line, and we're seeing more of a fuzzy line here. And that's what worries me is that internally, we might see this as a fuzzy line, but outside, increasingly, people are saying, 'Nope. Can't do that anymore. Can't teach that anymore. You're done. You're fired.' Right? Or that center's being closed down. Right? 

Again, every week we see headlines of now, you know, journals and newspapers being closed down because they fall under some DEI initiative. And that's what worries me because that's the part that I think higher ed does very well is this discernment, this debate piece. And I think that lawmakers and the public at large see this more as black and white. That's DEI or that's conservative or that's liberal. We're just gonna cut that out. That's what worries me a little bit about this moment that we're living in. Right now.

And I get it. You know, institutions can't police everything on campus, but there needs to be a little bit of due process, a little bit of discussion about this, and I feel like we're losing that in this moment.

Michael Horn

Yeah. No. I think it's a good point. 

I mean, it's why I admire the work of FIREfire. We had Greg [Lukianoff], obviously, on the show last year. I think they do a very good job on both sides, calling balls and strikes around ‘cancel culture’ on both sides that's not conducive or helpful to the purpose of the university in seeking truth and creating these breakthroughs that come when you have honest discussion, disagreement, and so forth. 

So I think we agree. I don't think there's gonna be obvious bright lines on this, but I do think a resetting of the campus culture, Jeff, that you've been writing a lot about around this and sort of the norms, if you will, into which faculty enter and staff and administrators enter as they think about this and the environment that they're trying to purposely create. 

It's gotta be different from the one that preceded Trump in my mind, and that's why I think in some ways he's more symptom than cause — he certainly bears his ‘cause’ part of this — but I think in many ways he's a symptom of what has happened. 

The blowback is not where we wanna end up either. Who's gonna step up and have a conversation now given that higher ed is under pressure and has to have a conversation, I think, to create something more meaningful here?

Jeff Selingo

So, Michael, just before we end here, I wanna go back to the framing of the first question that I asked the chancellor, Daniel Deremier of Vanderbilt. 

And this was this idea that there could be a new competitor or set of competitors to what we've always thought of as the most elite Ivy Plus institutions. Right? Even when we think about the Ivy Plus, that is even still that is a closed kind of club. 

So this idea that, you know, Vanderbilt, I will tell you. Right? I mean, you know this living up in Boston, it has is a much different institution today than it was 30 or 40 or 50 years ago. It is talked about in a way that it hasn't been. It is talked about in these elite circles that it hasn't been like it hasn't been in the past. It has a lot more overlap applications even with the Ivy League.

Is this possible? Do you think it's possible to have a club, whatever that club — whatever you wanna call it — that in 25, 30 years, we're gonna be talking about another set, a different set of institutions, just like we talk about the Ivy League, and maybe Vanderbilt is part of that. Is that even possible?

Michael Horn

Well, the fact that you gave me 30 years, I think, makes it possible.

Jeff Selingo

Oh, okay.

Michael Horn

The reason I'll say that is, like, I don't think it's an overnight reset. Right? It's gonna take continuous activity in this direction. 

Because I think, in many ways, the other thing that has given those institutions the role that they play in society, certainly nationally, not necessarily locally, that's a separate conversation, but nationally, is the alumni networks. Right? And the power that they exert disproportionately, and you would point out it's not the only way to get into those networks. You do that well in your book. But, you know, two lottery tickets for every one is, I think that's the way you put it in the book, is like a pretty you know, that those aren't bad odds for a set of institutions that educate not a lot of the American public. 

But over the course of a generation, could those alumni networks look very different? I don't see why not. Right? It depends on how much do they perpetuate themselves, and frankly, how much are those alumni networks asking some big questions now as well.

Jeff Selingo

I was just wondering about that same thing. Right? Like, were they just as upset as the potential students who wanna go into those alumni networks eventually. 

I also thought it's interesting … he brought it up, I didn't bring it up. And since we taped it with him, they didn't make the playoffs, Vanderbilt. But they do operate this big athletics piece as well that puts them at the center of a national conversation, just in kind of the brand name piece of this too, which I also, find interesting.

Michael Horn

Well, stay on that for a second. Like, if we went back a hundred years, who would have been among the biggest football teams in the country? Yale and Harvard would have been in that list. Right? And we used to always joke about it when I was at the Yale Daily News. Like, why the heck doesn't the Ivy League do scholarships and actually make a run for this from a brand perspective? Who would say no? 

But, you know, I get why it doesn't occur. And if you think about the professionalization of college sports that I think is coming down the pipeline and probably some form factor that looks a little bit different, having your affiliated football team with Vanderbilt is probably not bad brand equity.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. And just one last thought on this, Michael, just going back to the Ivy League in particular. We know it's obviously very centered, even if you're talking about the Ivy Plus, it's still obviously very centered on the Northeast. 

You know, I mentioned that I did the story, what, 25 years ago about the decline of the centrality of New England and Boston in particular as this home of higher ed. I know, Hillary Burns, our friend at the Boston Globe, has also done a similar piece on that now, like updating that. 

You know, there is something to be said about how migration and about how the population and the center of the world is moving to different parts of the country, and should they not have representation at this table among the most elite universities. 

And people say, well, you know, Vanderbilt is already part of the AAU. But, again, I think there are tiers in this, and there's no doubt about it. They're not mentioned in the same breath as at least HYP for right now, meaning Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.

Michael Horn

Right. Well, I think it gets to, Jeff, and I'm curious your take with your ASU hat on here, which you may or may not wanna say. But I mean ASU has made itself a heavyweight both in terms of defining excellence in the classroom not by whom they admit but how they actually teach regardless of where they enter. Right? And becoming this research powerhouse in areas that are regionally and strategically advantageous for ASU. 

What is Vanderbilt's model of that look like? And does that have big weight over time when you start to say, 'Hey. The superstar faculty are, you know, in those places.’ And, ‘Wow. It's clusters of x, y, and z.' And by the way, Vanderbilt is in New York City and West Palm Beach. I think those are not, like, coincidental moves if they can actually create meaningful outposts in those places. 

I confess, when I first saw that stuff, I was like, what are they doing that for? When I think about how much of the economy is still regional, well, it makes some sense, I think, potentially.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. And I think there's a lot of factors at play here, Michael. We have first of all, I think Diermeier's playing it well by attracting, you know, great faculty members, giving them the tools that they need. You know, Vanderbilt is much wealthier than it ever has been before. They, according to him, they don't seem to really be at, you know, risk here of losing a lot of money. They're not claiming poverty like the Northwesterns of the world and the Chicago's of the world that you've heard in in recent weeks. 

The other thing is that they haven't been in the news for firing professors like Texas A&M and the University of Texas.

Michael Horn

Right. The negative and chilling parts of it.

Jeff Selingo

The negative piece of this. Right? Because I don't think I wanna be on that side either. I think that some of those institutions will regret in 10 or 15 years some of the positions that they've taken, and I don't think he's had to do that. 

But at the end, and I will end my thoughts here, but as I've gone on the road the last couple of months around "Dream School," and we all keep talking about this, you know, the same 20, 25, 30 schools, it makes me think, 'Well, why don't we have a couple of different lists of 10 and 20 and 25 schools? Right? Like, nobody wants to apply to the 75th school. I get that. Well, some people don't. But, like, why do we have the same set all the time of the top 25? Why can't we have the top 25 in this area and the top 25 in that area? 

And maybe ASU is, you know, accessible excellence. Right? We're both big, but excellent. Right? Maybe, Vanderbilt is part of a vanguard of institutions, kind of like the new research institutions, and the Northeasterns of the world, I would imagine, would be part of that. Right? So, like, this is the thing. 

I feel like it's like a zero sum game in higher ed. We have to knock somebody off in order to create room. But why can't we have, like, you know, there's the Ivy League, and there's another league, whatever we wanna call that, that is just as good, it's just a little bit different?

Michael Horn

It goes back to what Joseph Aoun said to us. Right? How do we have true differentiation across institutions where you say, 'I'm going to x because of y,' and there's a deeper sense of specialization, distinction, differentiation, right, that is actually part of the value as opposed to maybe, you know, a reason to run away from it because I want Harvard because it's great at all things or whatever it is. 

But, you know, I think as we've seen, there are trade-offs on all sides of the equation. There's no perfect fit for anyone, so let's stop pretending that that game is real.

Jeff Selingo

Especially in a nation, by the way, of 350 million  people.

Michael Horn

There you go.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah.

Michael Horn

Alright. Well, let's wrap it there. We're gonna bring Daniel Dearemeier back for just one more moment, for our of our favorite segments at the moment, three rapid-fire questions around his experience in higher ed. 

Daniel, thanks again for joining us for these rapid-fire questions. 

We'll start with this. Which was your favorite college class and why when you were studying?

Daniel Diermeier

My favorite college class was a class in philosophy on Wittgenstein's ‘Philosophical Investigations’ when I was a first-year student at the University of Munich. 

And I'd always been interested in philosophy, but it was more kind of traditional German philosophy. This was a completely radically different way to think about the world, an unforgettable experience that has shaped my thinking ever since.

Michael Horn

What's the most ridiculous campus complaint that you've ever heard or dealt with?

Daniel Diermeier

Well the most complaints you get are about parking or dining. I mean, that's basically usually top of the list. And there's a whole variety of ridiculous requests there. 

But one of my favorites is the following. So you talk with faculty and you talk about an initiative, and they say we've never heard about this. You didn't communicate enough. And then you say, well, you know, we have this publication that all of you are getting in your inbox. And then they said, well, you can't expect me to read that. 

So that's a classic and one I cherish very much.

Jeff Selingo

No one reads emails.

Michael Horn

Terrific. Let's end with this one, which is imagine you get a free $1 billion for your institution, defying the phrase that there's no free lunch. What would you do with it?

Daniel Diermeier

I think half of that I would invest in supporting students — financial aid. The other one, I think we would want to invest in research, particularly research infrastructure, and bringing the best faculty to Vanderbilt.

Michael Horn

Terrific. 

Daniel, thank you so much. 

Well, Daniel, thank you so much again for joining us, and thank all of you for joining us for this really interesting conversation about one of the hottest topics right now in higher ed. 

We are very much looking forward to all the perspectives that will come our way out of this episode and promise to think about how else we can continue to cover these sets of questions. 

As always, we'll see you next time on Future U.