The Hustler sat down with Chancellor Daniel Diermeier for our first debrief of 2025. He shared his hopes for the university in 2025, reflected on civil discourse on campus and highlighted the uncertainty the presidential transition may bring to higher education. 

He also spoke about a new position within administration, graduate student unionization and the continuing success of Vanderbilt athletics.

University goals and civil discourse on campus

What are your primary goals for the university in the new year?

There are always three things that we’re looking at. The first thing is the core operations that the university’s engaged in — that’s the research, the teaching side [and] the administrative side that supports that — and for us, that means that every year, we want to do a little better than the year before. We want to think about improvements to residential life. We want to think about improvement to student services. We want to be the destination for the most promising students for whom Vanderbilt is the right choice. We want to be the destination for the most promising faculty. We want to increase our fundraising. 

Number two is what I would call ‘strategic initiatives.’ These significant efforts [can] have a transformative impact on the university. Top of mind for us is the creation of the College of Connected Computing, the launch of the Institute of National Security, our work in West Palm Beach [and] our work with the New York campus. We’re also doing a lot now in the area of innovation. These are very significant efforts that require lots of people working together, and they are like a little bit of a sprint for a time — you kind of have to really focus on [one thing], and then you can turn your attention to another one. 

The third thing — very critical right now — is the political environment of higher education. On many campuses [there are] aftershocks of the unrest on campuses and protests [that happened] post-Oct. 7. I think we’re in great shape on that. I think we have had a great start to the academic year, but it’s still going on. And then, of course, now, with the new [presidential] administration in place, there is a lot of pressure on higher education and there are a variety of things that are not super clear yet. We need to be very engaged with [the new administration] to make sure our voice is heard and also so we understand exactly how the dynamics in Washington [DC] will affect our life.

As we are beginning the new year, how are you working toward the university’s goals of fostering civil discourse and open dialogue?

Almost every week there is something. We started Dialogue Vanderbilt a year and a half ago, and we are building on our efforts together but also doubling down on that [initiative]. I think it was really important that we had this as part of [first-year] orientation — the [event with] the fearless Hustler Editor-in-Chief with questions of free speech and institutional neutrality. It was a great event. And then last week I was on One Small Step — the event was packed with people [and was] just structured, one-on-one conversations. There are [also] speakers on campus, classes and discussions at residential colleges. The most important thing for civil discourse is that it needs to become part of the culture — it is the way we do things here, a natural thing. It’s not something we have to remind people of all the time, and I think that’s happening. 

I’ve seen this now in conversations with students — they are bringing this up — there’s almost a sense of pride that this is part of the student experience. I was blown away by how incredibly well organized and thoughtful the debate between the Vanderbilt College Democrats and Vanderbilt College Republicans was before the election. [That was] a real moment of pride for us. 

This is maybe less visible to the students, but the faculty aligned with that as well. [The faculty] just passed a resolution about academic freedom, which was terrific. So I think this is something that is more and more becoming a core component of our culture at Vanderbilt.

Two months from today will mark one year from the sit-in protest at Kirkland Hall last March. Do you have any thoughts looking back on this protest and its influence on civil discourse at the university?

This was an event where we needed to be very clear about what our values and principles are, and act accordingly. As we said at the time, our students did very well in terms of participating in protest and making their voices heard throughout the year. Then, there were students who decided that they wanted to break the rules. And if you break the rules, especially if a staff member gets injured, there are consequences for that. Then, people go through the disciplinary process. So I think what we did [was] we were clear about the principles, we communicated them, and then when [students] challenged it, we acted accordingly. And then we talked more about it. There were lots of discussions with students, with The Hustler, the faculty senate, and that’s great. [My] sense is that we did the right thing at the time. As you know, the disciplinary process that we have is uniform and [is] always used in the same way, and it was applied in this particular case, and the outcome was the outcome. I think that’s how it was supposed to be handled. 

Antioch High School and campus safety

The Nashville community was deeply impacted on Wednesday by the shooting at Antioch High School. Considering this incident, as well as the upcoming two-year anniversary of the shooting at the Covenant School, what message do you have for students who may be concerned about their safety in Nashville or on campus?

This is a top priority for us, and it already [was] after the Covenant School shooting, which, of course, was very tragic, just like the Antioch shooting — a terrible tragedy. What we do now is we look at our processes. We had a first assessment of what we can [do to make] sure that campus safety is at the highest possible level. We’re now going to do a second round of that. We took the first recommendations in [to be implemented], and there’s some follow-up [and] things we still want to do. 

We have noticed a recent installment of signs prohibiting firearms in buildings on campus. What was the university’s reasoning behind the decision to add these signs?

I think, just to be clear, that this is an important issue. [Campus] safety is the top priority for us. It was an opportunity for us to make sure that everyone who maybe doesn’t come on campus often understands what the rules are.

Can you expand on any specific plans the university has to continue to improve safety on campus?

I think we’re right in the process right now. [But] we’re not quite at a point right now where I can say we’re going to do this or that. [Once] we have taken specific steps towards implementing a particular plan, we will obviously communicate that.

Changes to administration

Darren Reisberg was recently appointed vice chancellor of administration. Can you share some insight into what led to this decision and what your hopes are for him in this new role?

We always look at whether our administrative structure is supporting the most important needs for the university and the strategic goals that we have. [We] have a very significant amount of real estate projects — on campus [with] residential colleges, [what’s] going on [with] athletics and then, of course, we have West Palm Beach and New York. [We] felt it was a good idea to take the very large portfolio which had activities from parking, police, dining and real estate, which is too big, [and] have a more focused real estate portfolio that would be a new [Vice Chancellor for real estate and campus planning] role that we’re searching for right now and then have a have the vice chancellorship for administration. 

[I] call it campus services, but given Darren Reisberg’s role in Dialogue Vanderbilt, which he was the leader [for], he’s also helping us set up the campus in New York. [We] have a lot that we want to get done, and we want to make sure that we have the talent and the experience at the Vice Chancellor level to really advance those projects. For those of you [who] have had a chance to work with Darren, he’s very dedicated to student life and success. [He] spends a lot of time with students and people. [He is] former president of Hartwick College, so he really understands students well. [It is] important that our senior administrators are connected with students in educational experiences [and] their residential life.

We’re grateful to Eric Kopstain, who [is] going to [a] new chapter [of] his life, for the 12 years of wonderful service, nowhere more than during COVID-19, where Eric was one of the absolutely essential leaders that helped us successfully deal with the challenges that COVID-19 brought.

According to the press release announcing Reisberg’s new position, you are looking to hire a new vice chancellor for real estate and campus planning. Can you clarify this new position and how this role will impact the future of the university?

If you think about what [Reisberg’s] role is, it is really about services on campus. That’s literally everything from dining to public safety to business services to parking — there’s a whole bunch of things like that, plus Dialogue Vanderbilt and a couple of other things. The vice chancellor for real estate is a role that is focused on buildings and on the built environment — land acquisitions, design, master planning [and] construction. That’s a big portfolio. We have a humongous amount of buildings already, and we have an extensive list of buildings that we want to advance over the next few years. So it was important to me that we had somebody who had the specific skill sets to lead the real estate function, both on and off campus, and that’s what we’re searching for.

Is there any connection between your shared history at the University of Chicago with Darren Reisberg and Provost Cybele Raver and their current roles in administration at Vanderbilt?

Darren [Resiberg], I knew — we worked together at [the University of] Chicago, and I had very high respect for him. When there was an opportunity to bring him to Vanderbilt, that was great. I didn’t know Provost Raver at [the University of] Chicago. We really met during the search process when she was Deputy Provost at NYU, and I was just impressed by her experience, her commitment to research and educational excellence. She had a pretty large portfolio; NYU is a complicated, large institution. 

Earlier this month, former President Joe Biden awarded Professors Kevian Stassun and Larry Bartels with National Medals of Science. Could you talk about this achievement and how the university encourages professors to strive towards innovation and leadership in their fields?

We had just an incredible year of recognizing our faculty — the MacArthur Award that also Kevian Stassun [also] won. He had quite a year. Our alum, John Jumper, won the Nobel Prize, and Jeff Coffin was inducted into the Rock in the Hall of Fame. 

The National Medal of Science [is] the highest honor in science that the United States can bestow on faculty. We’re very proud of them, and we’re very proud that they were recognized. That’s what we want to strive for. We want to strive to bring faculty here who are the very best in their field, whose research has a generational impact [in] shaping how entire fields are structured, and [faculty who] have an impact on some of the challenges and opportunities that we’re dealing with as a country and as the world right now. We would love it if we have future National Medal of Science winners or Nobel laureates on the faculty at Vanderbilt.

Graduate student unionization

In December, a federal judge ordered that the National Labor Relations Board could not continue with a union election without a FERPA-compliant process. Can you share the university’s perspective on this ruling and the subsequent withdrawal of the election petition? 

Our position has always been that graduate student unionization is a problematic process, and that’s because graduate students are first and foremost students. What happens then is that the regulatory and legal environment of being a student clashes with the regulatory and legal environment of being an employee, like an employee in a factory. We were always worried about that in a variety of different aspects. 

Now, this particular issue, I think, made this conflict visible to everyone because the judge found a substantial conflict between two different federal laws: on the one hand, the regulations of the NLRB, and on the other, FERPA, which protects the privacy of our students. We had 130 students voicing objections to [the use of student information]. We felt it was the right thing to do to support the privacy rights of our students. It was an example of why unionization was never intended for graduate students. It was intended [to be] part of other industries. We can’t have the privacy rights of our students violated. There was support by the federal judge, which we were delighted to see. 

This is still an ongoing process. This is not done. The union has stopped and withdrawn its petition. One can speculate exactly why they were doing that. It could be because of this ruling, [or it] could be because of the change in administration. That’s their decision, so I’m not gonna speculate on why they did that. But what that means at this point is that the efforts to organize our graduate students have come to an end, for now. It may start again, but I think our position on that will be the same as it is now: We don’t think that the unionization of doctoral students is a good idea, and we have strong evidence for why that is so.

Do you believe the university’s continued opposition to the unionization efforts influenced the graduate students’ decision to withdraw their election petition?

[It’s] difficult to say. That’s really a decision that they had to make, and lots of different considerations go into those decisions. We have been very clear about what our position is for a long time, and we’ve had lots of discussions — with students, with the Graduate Student Council, with faculty, with chairs — about why this is a bad idea. The only thing that I think was more visible now was the fact that a federal judge now gave his opinion on these issues. That’s new, and there was obviously new information, as well as, I think, the change in administration. I think that should not be underestimated. But our position has always been the same.

How does the university plan to address graduate students’ concerns moving forward?

I think we have [made] great progress on this. Graduate students are represented. Our processes for addressing graduate student concerns, I think, are excellent, and there have been lots of improvements in graduate student life for years. We’re very keen on that. We want to make sure that our graduate students can thrive because the reason they’re here is because we have graduate programs [and] because we want to educate the next generation of scholars. We want to make sure that they’re in the best possible position to make the transition from a graduate student to a faculty member to a scholar. That’s a very demanding transition, and it needs to be supported. They need to have opportunities to learn how to teach, to learn how to do their research, to learn how to develop their own ideas [and] to write their dissertation. Everybody who’s ever been in a doctoral program knows that it is an intense period with a lot of ups and downs, and we’re totally committed to supporting our graduate students. We just do not believe that unionization is the right way to do that.

New presidential administration

During his reelection campaign, President Trump pledged to close the Department of Education if he returned to office. After signing an executive order on Monday ordering federal agencies and departments to rescind many of the Biden administration DEI initiatives, the DOE removed and archived DEI training materials and reports from outward-facing communication channels on Thursday. Do you see any further cuts within the DOE affecting higher education, specifically at a private institution like Vanderbilt?

We just don’t know at this point. There have obviously been a whole slate of executive orders, many of them directing another department to develop guidelines or to clarify a particular position. I think there’s a tremendous amount of uncertainty. That’s always true in a transition from one administration to the other. I think the amount of change that we’re seeing and the amount of uncertainty is higher than we typically have. 

[We] are paying close attention to what’s happening in Washington, both in Congress and in the administration. We want to make sure that Vanderbilt’s voice is present in that, that we have conversations with representatives across the aisle, and it’s very important that we make sure the core values that made American universities great are protected and supported. 

With President Trump’s deportation plans, many international students around the country have raised concerns about being able to access higher education in the U.S. Does the university have plans to address these worries and support these students?

We will definitely support our students, and the question is exactly what this is going to look like. At this point, this is speculation. We just don’t know how this is going to shape up. These things can be very stressful and very challenging for international students — I remember this well from a few years ago. We also need to make sure that we’re following the law. Those are the types of challenges that we always have to deal with in a variety of different areas, and once we have more clarity on how this will be realized, how this will be implemented, what the exacting immigration policy is, how it’s going to be structured and what this means for universities, we’ll make sure that we are on top of it.

Do you anticipate these deportation plans having any effect on whether the university will continue to admit international students at the same rate?

[There’s] lots of uncertainty. We are committed to having international students on campus. It’s very important for us because we want to be a destination for the most promising students from across the world, but it also enhances our educational experience for domestic students because they are now interacting with students who come from different cultures and different backgrounds. So, we strongly believe that having international students in our community is vital for providing the type of education that we provide. Exactly how immigration laws are going to [affect] them, we’ll just have to see. But this is a very important thing for us. It’s true for undergraduates; it’s definitely also true for graduate students.

Sports successes

With the success of Vanderbilt’s sports teams this year, particularly with our football and basketball victories as well as Diego Pavia being able to return next year, has your approach to the university’s focus on athletics shifted? Are athletics becoming more of a priority since the start of the Vandy United project?

I think what you see here is the result of a commitment that we made four and a half years ago, where we said, ‘Athletics is as much part of the university as the law school’ — I think that’s the example I used at the time. [Athletics] is an integral part of what Vanderbilt is, and we want to compete at the highest level in academics and athletics. To do that, we have to make some changes, and we have to make some investments, [including] investments in people. We appointed [vice chancellor for athletics and university affairs] Candace Lee at the time. We have a whole bunch of new coaches. We have a variety of new people working in athletics and in facilities. For those of you [who] have been at the football stadium, we are almost there. One more part has to be completed, but it’s already a different place, and it has a different atmosphere. 

I’m delighted the students were so supportive and engaged this year. It was wonderful to see a full student section [who were] really excited and supporting our athletes. Then [the students] demonstrated that they could carry a large piece of equipment to downtown Nashville without creating too much damage, depositing it safely into the Cumberland River. That was great to see. 

I was at both games against [the University of] Tennessee last week, Saturday and Sunday, and it was just fantastic. When you see the whole gym rocking in the support of the students, it’s great. What you see there is how athletics can bring a student community together and create joy and a sense of ‘we are all part of one university.’ That’s difficult to do in any other way. I think it was wonderful to see that, and we’re going to continue to execute our plan. We are facing a whole variety of new challenges because of all the changes in college athletics that are on the horizon, but we’re confident the progress in athletics will continue.

The Huber Center was recently dedicated as a new facility for basketball practices and various event spaces. Could you share more about this space and how it will play a role in the goals set by the Vandy United campaign?

This was another example of our investments [in athletics]. We needed to enhance the fan experience, and we needed to create facilities so that our athletes have a chance to compete at the highest level. The Huber Center is a beautiful example of that. It has great administrative parts. It has the basketball practice courts — men and women, they look exactly the same. [It has] fantastic facilities and is arguably one of the best in college athletics right now. 

You need to be able to create an environment where our athletes can succeed and thrive, just like when you have a faculty member [and] they need to have state-of-the-art equipment and labs. Due to the generosity of George and Cathy Huber, we were able to invest in the Huber Center, and we’re delighted that the basketball team is already having such a great year and can take full advantage of it.

Fundraising and donations

The Dare to Grow campaign reached its $3.2 billion goal early, but the campaign is still ongoing until next June. How is this extra money going to be utilized?

We have 18 months, so we have big ambitions and aspirations. In order to realize your aspirations [and] your ambitions, philanthropy is essential. Philanthropy is really what allows us to make these investments. We’re excited that we reached a goal. We’re proud but not satisfied. We want to make sure that we continue to run a strong campaign, and we’re having very good success this academic year already, so I’m excited about that. It’s a reflection of how well the university is doing, that we’re seeing so much excitement among our alums and parents [who] want to continue to invest in that level.

Editor’s mix

What did you do for the snow day?

I just stayed at home and caught up on lots of emails. That was my snow day. 

What is your New Year’s resolution?

It wasn’t really a new resolution, because I started a bit earlier, but I wanted to be more diligent to regularly exercise and make sure that that’s really an important part of my life, and it’s not kind of start and stopping. And so far, so good. So far I’ve been consistent.

What is your favorite board game?

Chess is my favorite board game. Chess is great. I also like Go, but I haven’t played Go in a long time. 

How long have you been playing chess?

I’m not super-duper good, but I have these phases where I kind of get into it and it really grabs my imagination, but I haven’t played in a couple of years now.