Dartmouth provost resigns after AI-disclosure review; interim leader named

Dartmouth announced Santiago Schnell's departure as provost on October 28 after a faculty-led review of his AI use in writing. President Sian Leah Beilock's statement named Matthew Delmont interim provost through June 2028. The leadership change followed a review begun in September.

Beilock attributed the adverse findings about AI disclosure and institutional standards to the committee. She described the departure as Schnell's decision. These are attributed findings about particular writing and requirements, not a general prohibition on AI assistance.

The Dartmouth's independent reporting describes the committee examining writings, communications and available AI chat records. The committee said it did not use Pangram or other AI-detection tools to determine the extent of AI use. Its assessment should not be equated with a detector's score.

The student newspaper also reports a limit to the findings. For one co-authored article in the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, the committee found no disclosure-policy violation and no evidence that Schnell had used AI to edit or manipulate the paper's text. That result belongs alongside the adverse findings, rather than being erased by a generalized description of the controversy.

His attorney disputed his opportunity to respond, in a statement published by the National Catholic Register in its October 30 update.

The Register also reports Schnell's earlier explanation that he used AI to improve language and organization while taking responsibility for final content. His position distinguishes assistance with expression from authorship and judgment. It belongs in an account of the dispute alongside the committee's conclusions, rather than being replaced by assumptions about what any use of a chatbot must mean.

For universities, the practical issue is how leaders document assistance, follow the requirements attached to particular work and explain their decisions. Dartmouth's president emphasized transparency and human judgment as expectations for senior leadership. The episode makes those expectations part of an immediate governance decision, with a named interim leader, rather than only a hypothetical classroom debate.

The reviewed sources establish a departure, a succession arrangement and attributed committee findings. They do not establish how every future AI-assisted manuscript should be handled, nor demonstrate a new university-wide ban on AI. Readers should keep the institutional decision, the evidence considered and the disputed response separate when assessing the significance of the change.