Santiago Schnell resigns as Dartmouth provost over AI use

Santiago Schnell, a Catholic scholar and emerging leader in the push to reform U.S. higher education , has resigned as provost of Dartmouth College following an investigation into his use of artificial intelligence (AI) in published articles.

In an email to students that was reported on by the student-led publication at the college , The Dartmouth, on Wednesday, university president Sian Leah Beilock said Schnell had resigned and was “leaving the university” after an independent, faculty-led committee determined that Schnell may have violated university policies when he used AI in select academic works and popular articles without proper disclosure to the publications he was writing for. Dartmouth will have an interim provost through 2028, Beilock said.

Several fellow Catholic scholars, including some who have criticized Schnell’s apparent use of AI in writing, expressed surprise at the news, which underscores the thorny questions surrounding the rapidly growing adoption of AI tools in professional writing, particularly in higher education.

“Obviously, I am against AI writing. And yet I feel whiplash here,” said Jennifer Frey, a Catholic philosopher at the University of…