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 Virginia, on social media. “Who can hang a man in the wild, wild west, which is an accurate description of AI in higher ed right now? Especially at Dartmouth, which has so strongly encouraged [AI] use in the name of ‘not being left behind’!”
A native of Venezuela, Schnell, a mathematical biologist, was named chief academic officer of the vaunted Ivy League school at the start of the 2025-26 academic year. His appointment generated positive attention among some Catholics in higher education, who expressed appreciation for Schnell’s push for a more classical vision of university life centered on formation in beauty, truth, and friendship.
“His promotion was such a ray of hope in higher education, especially at elite universities,” said Jeremy Tate, the founder and CEO of the Classical Learning Test (CLT), an alternative to the SAT and ACT designed around classical education.
Beyond the secular higher education world, Schnell, who formerly served as a dean of the College of Science at the University of Notre Dame, was also a leading voice of reform at Catholic universities.
In June, Schnell addressed members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) at the the group’s plenary assembly in Orlando, Florida, telling the bishops that they “could be more vocal” and “more pushy” when it comes to making sure that Catholic universities are faithful to their unique mission of forming saints.
Controversial AI usage
But controversy began to swirl following a September article by The Dartmouth, which reported that several of Schnell’s public writings since 2022, including academic papers and op-eds for various newspapers, had been flagged by Pangram, a leading AI-detection tool, as overwhelmingly “AI-written.”
The Dartmouth’s report was prompted by a prior investigative piece by the publication Semafor, which in a broader investigation of AI-generated writing in major newspapers had flagged one of Schnell’s op-eds — a piece for The Washington Post about combating AI-facilitated cheating in schools — as being “100%” AI-generated.
In response to The Dartmouth’s September investigative report, Schnell said in an emailed statement that he uses AI for “language refinement, copyediting, improving clarity and organization and making writing processes more efficient,” but “review[s] the final text and take[s] responsibility for its content.”
“I develop ideas and arguments, conduct the research, evaluate the evidence and sources, determine the structure, prepare drafts and decide what appears in the final text,” Schnell wrote to The Dartmouth. “I regard these technologies as assistive tools. They do not identify the problem, design the research project, guarantee the validity of research results, interpretations, citations, conclusions or substitute for my research, intellectual judgment or authorship.”
He also added that AI detectors are “known to be unreliable.”
“There’s evidence that they’re biased against nonnative English speakers, such as myself,” Schnell wrote.
Schnell wrote three op-eds for the National Catholic Register, the sister partner of EWTN News, this year, two of which were on the theme of AI use and its effects on education. All three were flagged in The Dartmouth story on the provost’s AI usage. Schnell did not comment when asked Thursday if he used AI tools in drafting his commentaries for the Register. He referred questions about the Dartmouth College investigation and his resignation to his lawyers, who did not respond to an inquiry before publication.
In his public writings and in interviews, including with the Register, Schnell often addressed the current and future effects of AI on education, saying that he sees the rise of AI as an opportunity for classrooms to return to more low-tech, personalized modes of learning.
At the same time, Schnell has also written that he believes educators can make positive usage of large language model (LLM) AI tools.
“Used with discipline, [LLMs] can be genuinely useful,” he wrote, in part, for the Register in one of his op-eds. “A professor may use them to prepare discussion questions. A researcher may use them to survey literature more quickly. An administrator may use them to accelerate routine writing. It would be foolish to deny their utility.”
Catholic reaction
In the full investigative report into Schnell’s use of AI, published by Dartmouth, fellow faculty determined that Schnell had used AI to “meaningfully alter his writing in violation of at least one publication’s AI use and/or disclosure requirement, failed to disclose his use of AI in clear violation of a national newspaper’s stated policy, was not forthcoming about his AI use, and fell short of the standards set forth by” various academic codes of conduct.
Some higher-ed reform advocates, however, have questioned whether the outspoken Catholic scholar was treated fairly in the process.
“Was he treated with extra scrutiny because of his disposition?” asked Tate, who suggested that AI usage is widespread among university administrators. “I think there’s a conversation to be had.”
“I’m not saying he didn’t make a mistake, but this is a huge loss,” Tate added. “I think everybody loses here.”
Frey told the Register that she found Dartmouth’s decision shocking, in part because the university appears to have “suddenly drawn very clear and sharp lines with the provost’s own use of AI” when the acceptable norms of AI use in higher education remain largely undefined.
Additionally, she noted that Dartmouth itself has actively promoted the use of LLMs to “augment” traditional methods of education. According to The New York Times, the Ivy League school even entered into an agreement last year with Anthropic and Amazon Web Services to provide its faculty and students access to AI tech.
“Perhaps a better outcome, for Dartmouth and for us all, would have been to use the revelation of Schnell’s AI use to start a serious and transparent conversation on our campuses about what we think the lines [about AI use] are and why people and institutions draw them where they do,” she said.
“I am inclined to the view that there is a lot more for us to figure out before we begin to discipline and punish,” she added.
Tate said that he hopes Schnell has additional opportunities to “have a big impact somewhere in higher ed,” noting that “he’s got a lot he can give.”
He also said that others must work to carry forward the vision of higher-education reform that Schnell helped reintroduce into the national discourse, including conversations about the fundamental purpose of a university education.
“He was entering into that in a way that was really beautiful, with really timeless wisdom,” Tate said. “So let’s hold on to this mission. It may be the only mission that can save higher ed right now.”
This story was first published by the National Catholic Register, the sister partner of EWTN News, and has been adapted by EWTN News.
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