Editor’s notebook: Same old Vanderbilt

As any Tennessee sports fan knows, Vanderbilt University’s football team habitually struggles to compete in the Southeastern Conference, routinely starting games strong only to fade in the second half due to lack of depth. 

School supporters, watching reality play out over hope in front of them for the umpteenth time, shake their heads and say ruefully: “Same old Vanderbilt.” 

But of the actions of university administrators, we can also say “same old Vanderbilt,” as they commit unforced errors that echo mistakes an earlier generation made during the Civil Rights era.

On Tuesday, a group of students staged a sit-in in Chancellor Daniel Diermeier’s office in Kirkland Hall, the university’s administration building. At issue was a petition members of the Vanderbilt Student Government had circulated, asking for the university to honor the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS), a political movement based on the anti-apartheid movement but geared towards sanctioning Israel. Specifically, the petition asked the university to refrain from using student government funds for companies identified as complicit in aiding Israel in its war with Gaza. 

The petition was signed by 642 students, more than three times the required 200 for an issue to be placed on the student government spring ballot. Despite that, the university removed the petition from consideration, citing legal concerns.

So Nashville Scene reporter Eli Motycka, invited by the students who organized the sit-in, ventured to Vandy’s campus. Apparently, the front door to Kirkland Hall was locked. He tried several others. And then, he was arrested by Vanderbilt campus police for criminal trespass, packed into a police car and hauled downtown to court. 

Never mind that he wasn’t charged by Metro Nashville and he was released within a couple of hours of his arrest. Vanderbilt took its sweet time putting out a statement and when the university did, it was woefully bad. 

Of Motycka, the statement reads: “After repeated attempts to enter the administration building through multiple locked doors with signs noting the building was closed and being told by officers it was off limits, (Motycka) was eventually detained, arrested and released without charges being filed.” 

Diermeyer and Vanderbilt’s administration are, among other faults, displaying either a gross ignorance of the university’s history or worse, a complete lack of interest in it.

A Diermeier predecessor, Harvie Branscomb, was at the helm of the university during one of the school’s most disgraceful events. In 1960, Branscomb — no paragon of civil rights, having once written that “a large percentage of negroes have certain well known deficiencies,” according to David Halberstam’s “The Children” — caved to Nashville Banner publisher Jimmy Stahlman’s opposition to the Civil Rights movement and expelled James Lawson from the Vanderbilt Divinity School. 

Lawson, who studied nonviolent activism with Mahatmas Gandhi, was the force behind Nashville’s movement to desegregate lunch counters, an ally of Martin Luther King, Jr. and a revered icon of the Movement. The stench of Vanderbilt’s action has lingered for more than 60 years, despite the university’s attempts to make amends by creating the James Lawson Institute for the Research and Study of Nonviolent Movements at Vanderbilt University. 

According to the institute’s page on Vandy’s website, the institute addresses “a wide variety of ideas with the goal of fostering informed and civically engaged citizens in the 21st century and beyond.”

Protest is one of the hallmarks of the First Amendment and of universities; I can’t think of any better way to honor the spirit of the Civil Rights movement and Lawson than a campus student protest over international human rights issues. And to arrest a reporter for covering the protest is an absolute disgrace to what Nashville’s student civil rights leaders, including Lawson, undertook in the 1960s. 

Now, the university has issued a policy stating that all reporters must request and receive clearance to be on campus. That appears to be a new policy (and a ridiculous one at that)  but even if it were in existence on Tuesday when Motycka attempted to cover the sit-in, there’s the public relations disaster created by failing to heed the practical axiom that just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should. 

Might I suggest to Diermeier that he consider the actions of Branscomb’s successor, Alexander Heard? In 1969, Heard faced opprobrium from the Nashville business community — including Stahlman and others who pushed for the Lawson suspension — over an invitation for fiery Black Power activist Stokely Carmichael to speak on campus. 

In spite of resolutions from the Tennessee Senate castigating Carmichel and Stahlman’s machinations to oust Heard, Heard stood by the student group that invited Carmichael in what they called “a search for truth.” Nashville writer and historian Bill Carey has reported that amid the furor, newspaper columnists came to Heard’s defense. 

The job of any reporter worth their salt is to rattle the locked doors, be they literal or figurative. One of Vanderbilt’s roles, as home for the First Amendment Center and a university that prides itself on turning out critical thinkers and future leaders, is to unlock doors not only for students but for journalists — a class that has risen to the school’s defense at times.

Diermeier has been chancellor of Vanderbilt for just under five years, but until he makes sincere and public amends to Motycka and the university dials back its absurd and oppressive new policies, it’s the same old Vanderbilt, 1960 version.