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A recent article in The Atlantic highlighted that schism. Headlined “The Elite-University Presidents Who Despise One Another,” it described discord centering on two chancellors — Daniel Diermeier of Vanderbilt University and Andrew D. Martin of Washington University in St. Louis — who it said advocate for “a kind of voluntary, modified de-wokeification.”
Other leaders have, by contrast, offered a fuller-throated defense of academe’s status quo and encouraged their peers to present a united front against government incursion. The two factions, according to The Atlantic’s reporting, came to a head at an April meeting of the Association of American Universities, when Princeton University’s president, Christopher Eisgruber, made remarks “all but accusing” Diermeier and Martin “of carrying water for the Trump administration.” Other leaders, the magazine reported, see the men as leveraging the sector’s turmoil to raise their institutions’ profiles — and their own. Some presidents worry that Diermeier and Martin’s newest effort, a group called Universities for America’s Future, is meant as an upstart rival to the AAU, according to The Atlantic.
But Diermeier and Martin say that’s far from the case. Rather, they say, their advocacy for principles like institutional neutrality predates the second Trump administration; their institutions’ boards adopted a joint Statement of Principles in October 2024, and they’ve endorsed the same philosophies individually for even longer (Diermeier as provost of the University of Chicago, a longtime stalwart of the institutional-neutrality movement). In a February essay in The Chronicle, they condemned institutions for “drifting from their core purposes of education and research to take official positions on political and social issues,” a practice that has long attracted controversy, notably as many leaders issued public statements in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020.
In a joint interview, Diermeier and Martin pushed back on the notion that the sector’s leaders are in pitched conflict and made an argument for their vision for the sector. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
You’ve both rejected the “resisters versus reformers” dynamic that’s laid out in the Atlantic piece and elsewhere. How would you describe yourselves, if not resisters or reformers, within this broader landscape?
Diermeier: There was some language in the article that I think was kind of over the top. Nobody despises each other, and there’s no civil war. What we have is a discussion about where we are in higher education, what needs to be done. People have real disagreement on that. Andrew and I have been very clear in our messaging, what we think higher education should do, and there are two aspects to that. No. 1 is that we need to remind ourselves of the social benefit, the value to the American people, that comes from the work that the great research universities do.
But we also believe that there are things that need to be addressed, and that has to do with the creeping politicization of universities. I’ve been writing about that for years now in the context of institutional neutrality. That’s what the WashU-Vanderbilt principles were about. We had a piece in your publication where we make the case for that. Fundamentally, we have been saying the same things for months. We’ve said it under the Biden administration. We’re saying it now.
Martin: There’s no despising or disrespect or hatred among the sets of colleagues that we’ve been engaged with. There is a fundamental disagreement. And I think the disagreement is about two different things. One has to do with the need for reform. That is, in order to regain the trust of the American people — which we all know from the survey data that we, as a sector, have lost — is reform necessary? Daniel and I have been really clear that we do think reform is necessary, and that is certainly an item for debate.
There’s a second disagreement, which goes along these lines: Is this just a blip? That is, once we get past the midterm election, or once we get past the next presidential election, are we going to return to the status quo that we enjoyed during the Biden administration, and really enjoyed since not too long after World War II? Or is there going to be a structural change in the relationship between the federal government and higher education?
I believe that this is a moment of structural change, and that part of rebuilding the trust is to deeply engage with the government. The expectation can’t be if we put our heads down, try to stay out of the press, try to avoid attention from the administration, that everything’s going to be OK three and a half years from now. We are in a moment of structural change, and we need to lean into that and to be active, engaged participants in those discussions and debates.
Diermeier: The fundamental question is, What’s your core purpose? What are the core values that support that core purpose? How do you make these values real? How do you live by them, and how you act accordingly?
It sounds like you don’t believe other institutions are doing that, or living up to that purpose.
Diermeier: We have been clear about what we stand for, and then other institutions can see where they are on these types of issues. I mean, that’s their decision. I’m just pointing out that, on divestment, for example, there’s a tremendous variety on that. We argued on principle that we would not engage calls for divestment because we think that’s inconsistent with institutional neutrality. But many other universities or university leaders have not taken that position. So there’s a clear difference, from my point of view. That’s just one, and there may be others as well.
Chancellor Diermeier’s office shared some talking points before this conversation. One said that institutions like Vanderbilt are “winning,” not just the argument around neutrality, but also in enrollment. Could you touch on some evidence that you have of that? What does it mean to “win” in an environment like this?
Diermeier: I think “winning” maybe is a little overstated, and I’m not quite sure I want to use exactly that word. But we have been engaged on questions like free speech, institutional neutrality, civil discourse, and I think it’s great to see that many universities are moving in that direction. That was not true when we started a few years ago. It needs to continue, and it needs to happen with more urgency.
Demand for students coming to Vanderbilt has increased significantly this year, significantly from the Northeast. We don’t measure this directly, but we know from Hillel there’s a tremendous increase in interest from Jewish families. When we talk to families on that, one thing that they value and that drives their decision — both on students’ and on the parents’ side — is that they believe that this is an environment where their sons and daughters can engage in an environment that is more open to different points of view.
Martin: We’re seeing exactly the same trends in the data at WashU. I can tell you, having spent two and a half days on the campus meeting with parents, one of the things that have really attracted those families to Washington University is the clarity of our commitment to mission, to what we view as a core purpose of the university, and a belief that their children could come here in an intellectually rich and rigorous environment that’s also a safe environment.
Do you have numbers that show, for example, that students are coming to your institutions instead of an Ivy League institution?
Diermeier: We don’t have those numbers yet, but we do know from conversations that we are being considered now by families and by students that maybe would not have considered us two to three years ago.
Martin: I can share many anecdotes from families that I met with whose children were admitted to many of the Ivy institutions, and were admitted here, and chose to come to WashU. I didn’t have those conversations three years ago or five years ago with admitted students. Again, that’s anecdotal.
You mentioned enrollment numbers going up. That raises another question mentioned in the Atlantic piece, about perceived opportunism on your part as leaders. How would you respond to that?
Martin: We have been absolutely clear and consistent about what we stand for. The reason why we’re doing this is because we believe that the future of American higher education is at risk and that it is important for us to engage across the political spectrum, to listen and to understand what the criticisms are, to internalize those criticisms, and then work to improve so we can ultimately regain the trust of the American people.
The American higher-education system is the envy of the world, and it will not be the envy of the world if huge chunks of the American people don’t value what we’re doing. It’s not a communication issue, although we need to communicate better. There’s actually some issues that we need to deal with that we talked about earlier. That’s why we’re doing this work. We’re not doing this work to seek attention or anything else. It’s really driven by a commitment to the principles, because we believe that this is the best path forward for American higher education.
Diermeier: We’ve been saying, we’ve been doing this for years, and nobody paid attention. Now people are paying attention. In the current environment, the urgency is just much more pressing.
One of the criticisms that I’ve heard is that your work is a distraction, and that it creates infighting or squabbling among presidents, that you’re adding fuel to the fire.
Martin: I think that’s misplaced. There’s no infighting, there’s no squabbling. There have been many public discussions and public disagreement about what the right approach is for the future. I mean, what’s the counterfactual? We don’t have the discussion? We bury our heads in the sand and focus on other things? I think it’s actually great for the academy for us to live up to our academic principles and actually have debates about issues that we disagree about.
So you think it’s healthy and necessary for the sector, for example, for you to have opposite beliefs as Christopher Eisgruber, and to debate those publicly?
Diermeier: The most important thing is that we do the right thing. The most important thing is that we act appropriately in the best interest of the universities. If people disagree on what that is, that’s OK, but we’re not interested in debate for the sake of debate. We’re not going to stop arguing for a position now, just because people disagree with us.
Tell me about your plans for Universities for America’s Future.
Diermeier: We have articulated a set of principles that we think clarify the purpose of great universities and the values that should sustain that. We have organized discussions among presidents. There was a big one that you may know about in Dallas that we co-hosted in March. We continue to have discussions on that. We had the panel at the AAU meeting. This is an ongoing movement, ongoing process to play a role in how universities are thinking about these issues, and have dialog and discussions with other university presidents so that we’re clear about what the challenges are and what should be done about them, and we’re not going to stop that.
Universities for America’s Future is just a name, a label that we have for that now. Maybe it’s a movement, maybe it’s a set of discussions, maybe it’s a set of activities that we’re thinking about. It’s not some kind of formal thing. It’s not an association or anything like that.
According to the Atlantic piece, some view this as an alternative to the AAU. It sounds like that’s not what you intended.
Diermeier: The AAU has its purpose. It’s a membership organization. We have no intention of doing anything like that. Nobody has any intention of competing with the AAU.
This debate is taking place at a time when, obviously, the Trump administration has taken aim at higher ed. Are either of you concerned about this debate weakening the sector’s sense of autonomy?
Martin: I would say the fact there is a public debate about the future of American higher education has no relationship whatsoever to what actions that the administration is taking.
So you don’t see debate between leaders as detracting from that autonomy?
Diermeier: I’m not 100-percent sure what we do about that. We have a point of view. We’ve had the point of view for a long time. We’re going to continue to argue for a point of view, because we think it’s essential. Now, if people disagree with that, I think that’s their decision. That’s the nature of civil discourse. We think that it’s important to get this right. We don’t think that the alternative, to hide under the desk, is appropriate.
