Dartmouth College provost Santiago Schnell resigned on Wednesday after a faculty-led committee found he used AI tools in his published writing without properly disclosing it. President Sian Leah Beilock announced the departure in an email to campus, saying Schnell is leaving the university and that stepping down was his decision.
The committee's report, dated Oct. 27, concluded that Schnell "used AI to meaningfully alter his writing in violation of at least one publication's AI use and/or disclosure requirement" and "was not forthcoming about his AI use." It also found he fell short of Dartmouth's own ethics and professionalism standards. The committee recommended no disciplinary action.
“Out of respect for his colleagues and the institution, Santiago has resigned as provost and is leaving the university.”— Sian Leah Beilock, President of Dartmouth College
The review traces back to an Aug. 9 opinion column Schnell wrote for The Washington Post, which argued that universities need better ways to assess student work as AI makes cheating easier. Schnell had said he used ChatGPT to refine a few arguments and check grammar before submitting it. The committee called that a "clear violation" of the newspaper's stated AI policy.
Key facts
- 01Dartmouth provost Santiago Schnell resigned on Oct. 28 after a faculty-led committee reviewed his AI use.
- 02The committee's Oct. 27 report called his Aug. 9 Washington Post column a clear violation of the paper's AI policy.
- 03He used Dartmouth's enterprise Claude tool to edit a journal manuscript, fix code and generate figures without disclosing it.
- 04The committee did not use AI detection tools and recommended no disciplinary action.
- 05History professor Matthew Delmont is interim provost effective immediately, through June 2028.
The most detailed finding involved a research paper published in September in ChemSystemsChem, a Wiley journal. The committee found Schnell used Dartmouth's enterprise deployment of Claude to "substantially edit his research manuscript, troubleshoot errors in computer code, and generate figures." The publisher has required disclosure of that kind of use since at least 2023, and Schnell did not disclose it at submission.
In a Sept. 22 email to Beilock, Schnell said he had relied on older author instructions when preparing that paper.
“This wasn't the case, but a disclosure would have been the best approach.”— Santiago Schnell, Former Dartmouth provost
A third case involved a forthcoming article in the Journal of Catholic Higher Education. According to the report, Schnell uploaded the manuscript to Claude, asked whether it showed "many signatures of AI writing," and later submitted a revised version reflecting Claude's suggested changes. When the journal's editor asked about AI use, he said he did not understand that this type of AI-assisted editing required disclosure. The committee said that account "understates the nature of the Provost's actual AI use."
Not every finding went against him. The committee found no violation in a paper Schnell published in the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology in September, and no evidence he used AI to edit its text. Schnell has published at least 30 pieces since joining Dartmouth in July 2025; the committee focused on a handful.
The committee was chaired by former provost David Kotz and included computer science professor Hany Farid, trustee Odette Harris, creative writing professor Peter Orner and linguistics chair Lindsay Whaley. It did not rely on AI detection tools, instead reviewing Schnell's logs from Dartmouth's enterprise Claude tool and his emails. Schnell handed over his Dartmouth-issued laptop but did not provide logs from personal LLM accounts he used for academic and public writing, which the committee described as insufficient cooperation.
The case lands at a school that has embraced the technology. Dartmouth announced an AI partnership with Anthropic and Amazon Web Services in 2025, and Beilock has argued that "universities that hide from the technology will merely secure their irrelevance." Dartmouth's honor code requires students to acknowledge generative AI use in coursework.
History professor Matthew Delmont, associate dean of faculty for international and interdisciplinary studies, becomes interim provost effective immediately and will serve through June 2028. Beilock wrote that leaders must "model the transparency and human judgment that we expect from our students and scholars." Schnell did not respond to requests for comment, and Dartmouth hosts its "AI at 70: What Must Remain Human?" conference later this week.
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