679. Why Does Vanderbilt Keep Winning?

**Stephen Dubner** (0:00)
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Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. Before today's episode, a quick announcement. We are about to launch a new project, a video show that we've been working on for a while. You could think of it as an indie TV talk show on YouTube. We are very excited about it, and we're looking for Freakonomics Radio listeners who want to pre-screen episodes and share their feedback. We will select 100 people to take an early look. If you are interested in being an extension of our production crew, please go to the link in the show notes and sign up. We will have a lot more to say very soon about this new show. Now, here is today's episode of Freakonomics Radio.
Right now is a hard time to lead just about any institution, and leading a university is particularly hard. You've got your campus protests, your financial pressures, including federal funding cuts. You've got legal pressure from the Trump administration, which contends that universities have become captured by left-wing ideologies. And it's not like the American people are rushing to support you. According to Gallup Surveys, public trust in higher education is near a historic low. A lot of university leaders have crumbled under all this pressure. Many have been pushed out. But some campus leaders are, let's put it bluntly, they're winning. Over the next two episodes, we will talk to two of these winners.

**Daniel Diermeier** (3:06)
First up, my name is Daniel Diermeier. I'm the Chancellor of Vanderbilt University.

**Stephen Dubner** (3:11)
Vanderbilt is a major research university in Nashville, Tennessee, with about 7,300 undergraduates and 6,300 graduate and professional students. Its graduate programs in medicine and education are world class. Its business and law schools are also very well regarded. On the undergraduate side, it's already highly selective and applications continue to surge. Vanderbilt is also expanding under Diermeier with four new or planned satellite campuses. Even its football team, which is usually a laggard in the powerful southeastern conference, they've been winning big lately.
Perhaps most strikingly, Diermeier and Vanderbilt seem to have dodged the federal government's ongoing assault on the broader university system.

**Daniel Diermeier** (3:55)
We're a little bit of an outlier on that and we have been able to deal with the situations quite well, but that is not typical.

**Stephen Dubner** (4:02)
So today on Freakonomics Radio, we ask why? Why does everything seem to be going Vanderbilt's way?
According to Diermeier, one key to their success is their embrace of a policy called Institutional Neutrality, a policy that has made Diermeier one of the most polarizing figures in Higher Ed.

**Daniel Diermeier** (4:20)
Not everybody agrees with me, but my strong belief, and I think there's increasingly evidence now that is supplied almost on a weekly basis, that points out that we have a problem.

**Stephen Dubner** (4:31)
What is the problem in American universities and is institutional neutrality the solution? Let's find out, starting now.

**SPEAKER_3** (4:48)
This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything, with your host, Stephen Dubner.

**Stephen Dubner** (5:04)
Daniel Diermeier grew up in Germany, but has spent most of his academic career in the US as a political scientist and a scholar of management. At the University of Chicago, he became a dean and then provost. It was at UChicago where the modern doctrine of institutional neutrality was born. The university's Calvin Report, commissioned in 1967, and still famous in some circles, said that, quote, the university is the home and sponsor of critics. It is not itself the critic. So what does that actually mean at a university today?