Santiago Schnell Resigns from Dartmouth University Following Investigation into AI Use

Jonah McKeown

Santiago Schnell, a Catholic academic and one of the emerging voices promoting reform of higher education in the United States, has resigned as Dartmouth College's provost following an investigation into the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in his published articles.

In an email sent to students and shared on Wednesday by The Dartmouth, the university's student newspaper, the institution's president, Sian Leah Beilock, confirmed that Schnell had submitted his resignation and would be leaving the university.

The decision came after an independent committee of faculty members determined that Schnell may have violated university policies by using artificial intelligence tools in some academic works and popular articles without properly disclosing this to the corresponding publications.

Beilock announced that Dartmouth will have an interim provost until 2028.

The news surprised several Catholic academics, including some who had questioned Schnell's apparent use of AI. The case once again puts on the table the challenges posed by the rapid adoption of these tools in professional writing, especially in the university setting.

"Obviously, I am against AI writing. And yet, this has left me perplexed," said Jennifer Frey, a Catholic philosopher at the University of Virginia, on social media.

The scholar questioned whether the university had made such a sweeping decision while uncertainty still exists about the norms that should govern the use of these technologies in higher education. She also noted that Dartmouth has actively promoted their adoption in order to avoid falling behind.

A Catholic figure who promoted university reform

Of Venezuelan origin, Schnell is a mathematical biologist and was appointed provost of Dartmouth, a prestigious Ivy League institution, at the start of the 2025–2026 academic year.

His appointment was welcomed with enthusiasm by some Catholic circles connected to higher education, which valued his proposal to recover a more classical vision of the university, centered on formation in beauty, truth, and friendship.

"His appointment was a ray of hope for higher education, especially at elite universities," said Jeremy Tate, founder and chief executive of the Classical Learning Test (CLT), an alternative to the SAT and ACT based on classical education.

Before arriving at Dartmouth, Schnell served as dean of the College of Science at the University of Notre Dame. He also became one of the voices calling for reforms in Catholic universities.

In June, during a plenary assembly of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in Orlando, Florida, he asked the bishops to be "more expressive" and "more insistent" in demanding that Catholic universities remain faithful to their particular mission of forming saints.

The controversy over the use of artificial intelligence

The controversy began after The Dartmouth published an investigation in September indicating that several public writings by Schnell since 2022, including academic articles and opinion columns in various newspapers, had been identified by Pangram, one of the leading AI detection tools, as texts written mostly with AI.

The student newspaper's investigation arose from an earlier report by Semafor, which examined the use of AI-generated texts in major newspapers. In that analysis, a Schnell column published in The Washington Post, on how to combat academic cheating facilitated by AI, was flagged as text generated "100%" by artificial intelligence.

In response to the September investigation, Schnell explained in a statement sent by email that he uses artificial intelligence to "refine language, correct texts, improve clarity and organization, and make writing processes more efficient." However, he asserted that he reviews the final texts and takes responsibility for their content.

"I develop the ideas and arguments, conduct the research, evaluate the evidence and sources, determine the structure, prepare the drafts, and decide what appears in the final text," he wrote to The Dartmouth.

The academic maintained that he considers these technologies assistive tools that do not replace his research, his intellectual judgment, or his authorship. He also questioned the reliability of AI detectors.

"It is known that AI detectors are not reliable," he stated. He added that there is evidence these tools show bias against people who do not have English as their first language, as is his case.

Schnell published three opinion columns this year in the National Catholic Register, a sister publication of EWTN News. Two of them specifically addressed the use of artificial intelligence and its effects on education. All three articles were flagged in The Dartmouth's investigation.

Asked on Thursday whether he had used AI tools to write his contributions to the Register, Schnell declined to comment. Regarding the Dartmouth investigation and his resignation, he referred questions to his attorneys.

On October 30, his lawyer, Andrew Miltenberg, told the Register that Schnell had decided to resign both as provost and from his faculty position at Dartmouth.

"Dr. Schnell made this difficult decision out of deep respect for his colleagues and the university community at large, and to keep the institution from continuing to be the subject of distractions," he said.

The lawyer added that, although Schnell did not have a meaningful opportunity to present his side during Dartmouth's internal investigation, he decided to allow the Dartmouth community to move forward.

He also stated that the scholar is grateful to the colleagues and students who made his time at the institution meaningful, and that he hopes to continue contributing to higher education.

In his articles and interviews, including a profile published by National Catholic Register, Schnell had frequently addressed the current and future effects of artificial intelligence on education. He believed its expansion could become an opportunity for classrooms to recover more personalized learning methods with less dependence on technology.

At the same time, he acknowledged that large language models (LLMs) could have positive applications in the educational field.

"Used with discipline, they can be genuinely useful," he wrote in one of his columns for the Register. "A professor can use them to prepare discussion questions. A researcher can turn to them to review the bibliography more quickly. An administrator can use them to streamline routine writing tasks. It would be absurd to deny their usefulness."

Catholic Academics Question the Outcome

The full report from Dartmouth's academic committee concluded that Schnell had used artificial intelligence to "significantly modify his writings, violating at least the AI use and/or disclosure requirements of a publication." It also determined that he did not report that use, even though a national newspaper expressly required it in its policies, and that he was not sufficiently transparent about it.

The document further noted that his conduct did not meet the standards set by various codes of academic ethics.

However, some advocates for higher education reform questioned whether the scholar received fair treatment during the process.

"Was he subjected to greater scrutiny because of his position?" asked Jeremy Tate, who suggested that the use of artificial intelligence is widespread among university administrators.

"I'm not saying he didn't make a mistake, but this is an enormous loss. I think everyone loses here," he added.

For her part, Jennifer Frey told the Register that Dartmouth's decision surprised her, especially because the university seems to have suddenly established very clear and strict limits on the use of AI by its own provost, when the accepted norms in higher education are still not well defined.

The philosopher also recalled that Dartmouth has actively promoted the use of large language models to complement traditional educational methods. According to The New York Times, last year the Ivy League university even reached an agreement with Anthropic and Amazon Web Services to give its professors and students access to artificial intelligence technology.

"Perhaps a better outcome, both for Dartmouth and for all of us, would have been to use the discovery of Schnell's AI use to begin a serious and transparent conversation on our campuses about what we believe the limits should be and why people and institutions set them the way they do," Frey said.

"I tend to think we still have a lot to clarify before we begin imposing disciplinary measures and punishments," she added.

Tate expressed his hope that Schnell will find new opportunities to "have a great impact somewhere in higher education," since he believes Schnell still has much to contribute.

He also called on others to continue promoting the vision of university reform that Schnell had helped introduce into the national debate, especially regarding the fundamental purpose of university education.

"He was entering that debate in a truly beautiful way, with truly timeless wisdom," Tate said. "So let's keep this mission alive. It may be the only mission capable of saving higher education at this moment."

Originally published in National Catholic Register. Translated and adapted by the EWTN News Español team.

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