There was, indeed, a much deeper problem \u2014 just not the one Schnell opined about. The AI detection tool Pangram later identified his piece as 100 percent AI written, according to an analysis of AI writing<\/a> in national publications by the news platform Semafor that ran Aug. 26.<\/p>\n Schnell told Semafor that his Post essay was based on his own thinking, and that he used ChatGPT \u201cto refine a few arguments, check for grammatical errors, and submit it,\u201d before going through multiple rounds of editing. A native of Venezuela, he also noted there is evidence AI detectors \u201care biased against non-native English speakers, such as myself.\u201d<\/p>\n The scandal seemed to have died down \u2014 until Monday. That\u2019s when student reporters at Dartmouth published their own expos\u00e9<\/a> looking into several opinion pieces and academic articles published by Schnell in 2026. They found a median \u201cAI-written\u201d text percentage of 96 percent, according to Pangram, which boasts a near-zero false positive rate<\/a>.<\/p>\n Making matters worse, when Schnell responded to the allegations in an emailed statement to the student paper, The Dartmouth, the young journalists ran that through an AI detector \u2014 and found it was 100 percent AI-written.<\/p>\n In other words, according to The Dartmouth, a provost accused of using AI to write an op-ed about using AI even used AI to write a statement defending his use of AI. Or, as one Reddit user put it: \u201cDartmouth Provost caught using AI for everything<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a textbook case of exactly what we tell our students not to do,\u201d said Christopher MacEvitt, a Dartmouth professor of religion and chair of the department. \u201cI mean, my jaw literally dropped when I read the reporting in the student paper because it just so encapsulates everything that we fear is happening at Dartmouth.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cIn retrospect, I now realize I should always explicitly disclose use of AI in my public writing and be attentive to the expectations of AI use set by publications,\u201d Schnell said in a statement to the Globe sent Thursday. \u201cI am sorry that this was not my standard practice and, moving forward, it will be.\u201d<\/p>\n On Friday, The Dartmouth published a letter<\/a> to the editor by Schnell expressing similar sentiments.<\/p>\n \u201cThe questions this moment raise go well beyond any one person,\u201d Beilock said in a statement Thursday. \u201cThoughtful people on our campus can and should disagree about those norms, which are rapidly shifting. It is more clear than ever that we need role-appropriate rules and policies for this technology.\u201d<\/p>\n Beilock then sent a campus-wide email Friday announcing she would be launching \u201ca rigorous, objective review of how [Provost Schnell] has used AI.\u201d<\/p>\n The scandal brings to light the importance of human intelligence and ethics as we hurtle toward an unregulated AI future. Global tensions are already high with many business and political leaders sounding the alarm<\/a> over the dangers of AI. Suddenly, the discourse has turned toward end times<\/a> at the precise moment the college is touting itself as the place where it all began \u2014 the 1956 Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence is widely considered a seminal event for the field. <\/p>\n Last year, Dartmouth became the first Ivy League school to launch AI \u201cat an institutional scale,\u201d partnering<\/a> with Anthropic and Amazon Web Services, according to the college\u2019s website<\/a>, which notes AI is now being used by faculty across campus, while a faculty leadership group \u201censures the technology serves Dartmouth\u2019s educational mission, not the other way around.\u201d<\/p>\n But critics of the college administration say it is exactly the other way around. <\/p>\n \u201cWe are a liberal arts college,\u201d said Bethany Moreton, a professor of history at Dartmouth. \u201cIf we can\u2019t come up with a form of humanistic classroom experience and intellectual guardrails that can function in this moment, then I don\u2019t know who we are asking to do that task for us.\u201d <\/p>\n The Dartmouth chapter of the American Association of University Professors is now circulating a petition calling for the removal of Schnell.<\/p>\n Many people in the Dartmouth community see \u201ca tremendous hypocrisy\u201d in how college leaders talk about using AI ethically versus how they put it into practice, said alum Unai Montes-Irueste. <\/p>\n Much of the focus has been on students when it comes to AI and ethics, but Schnell\u2019s case has \u201cas much to do with enforcing rules on students that one violates oneself,\u201d said Dorothy E. Leidner, a professor of business and AI ethics at the University of Virginia McIntire School of Commerce.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a debate about whether writing itself is authorship,\u201d she wrote in an email.<\/p>\n She noted many researchers use graduate students to build the intellectual foundation of their work, but then the researcher writes a paper and gets the credit.<\/p>\n \u201cOne could argue that the provost in this case is merely the minion doing the busy work for the AI, which then authors the paper,\u201d Leidner said, adding that Schnell is essentially arguing the opposite \u2014 that AI is the minion, and he is the real author.<\/p>\n \u201cI personally believe that the very art of crafting a paper is a huge part of authorship,\u201d she wrote. \u201cWhen one crafts thoughts into words, one is also shaping thoughts.\u201d <\/p>\n In addition to being provost, Schnell is a professor of mathematics and adjunct professor of biochemistry and cell biology and biomedical data science.<\/p>\n His Washington Post piece urges universities to help students develop critical thinking skills while teaching them how to intelligently use AI. Dartmouth clearly states<\/a> students \u201cmay not use GenAI tools for submitted coursework unless expressly permitted\u201d in its own policy.<\/p>\n Weeks passed after the Semafor piece ran. Then came The Dartmouth\u2019s expos\u00e9. The students reviewed several articles and essays authored by Schnell before and after the public debut of ChatGPT in November 2022. \u201cPangram 4.0, the latest publicly available version of the AI detector, labeled all of Schnell\u2019s written works prior to 2022 as \u2019100% human-written,\u2019 while a test of nine of his works published this year returned a median \u2018AI-written\u2019 percentage of 96%,\u201d wrote reporters Alex Klee and Isabela Pierry. <\/p>\n Once again, Schnell defended himself. On Sept. 18, according to The Dartmouth, he emailed a statement to the newspaper explaining he uses AI to refine his writing and for making the process more efficient, but that he takes responsibility for its content.<\/p>\n \u201cI regard these technologies as assistive tools,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThey 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.\u201d<\/p>\n After Schnell\u2019s Sept. 18 email, he then sent the student paper another statement justifying his use of AI to write his earlier statement.<\/p>\n \u201cYou couldn\u2019t write it better in terms of a cautionary story,\u201d said MacEvitt.<\/p>\n As for Schnell\u2019s assertion that AI tools are biased against non-native speakers, Leidner, the AI scholar, questions that theory. <\/p>\n \u201cAI is so good at producing grammatically correct English that, if anything, one would expect non-native English writing to NOT be flagged as AI-generated for the very reason that it has grammatical irregularities,\u201d she said in an email. <\/p>\n Generative AI tools do much more than polish writing: They completely rewrite full sentences and paragraphs, and in doing so, the end result can \u201cdiverge significantly\u201d from the human mind, she said. \u201cRegardless of whether it is \u2018good\u2019 or not, writing is only human when it is a true representation of a person\u2019s thoughts.\u201d <\/p>\n As Dartmouth deals with such questions in real time, \u201cit kind of feels like a precedent is going to be set,\u201d said Stevenson, the history major. \u201cThen the question is, how will other academic institutions follow, or not follow, the lead of Dartmouth?\u201d <\/p>\n Brooke Hauser can be reached at brooke.hauser@globe.com<\/a>. Follow her @brookehauser<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"Dartmouth](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/IVGZADWTU24EOMMXGOM3LFEHZI.JPG\")
Dartmouth College Provost Santiago Schnell.Dartmouth College<\/p>\n![\"Sian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/EDNVIZKIHPMIR2TLZEJEZVOPKY.jpg\")
Sian Leah Beilock, president of Dartmouth College, at the school in Hanover, N.H., Feb. 3, 2024. CALEB KENNA\/NYT<\/p>\n