Dartmouth College Provost Resigns After Undisclosed Use of Claude Tool in Publications Comes to Light
Dartmouth College Provost Santiago Schnell resigned after it was found that he failed to disclose his use of the Claude tool in preparing an academic paper and an op-ed for the Washington Post about AI cheating, thereby violating publishers' rules.
Dartmouth College Provost Santiago Schnell resigned after an investigative committee found that he had failed to disclose significant use of AI in academic work and in his own op-ed for the Washington Post, even though publishers required it. Schnell had published a piece in the Washington Post on 9 August 2026 titled about universities struggling with AI cheating, but the problem being deeper than it appears.
According to the committee's report, Schnell did not make the investigation particularly easy – the committee used the phrase "insufficient cooperation". He handed over his Dartmouth-issued laptop but refused to provide logs from his personal language-model accounts related to the disputed texts and did not agree to meet with the committee.
The committee nevertheless obtained access to the corporate Claude account that Schnell used through Dartmouth College. It shows that he used the tool to revise his texts, search for and fix errors in code, and to edit or generate images.
Why it matters
The case specifically shows that rules on disclosing AI assistance in published texts are enforced even at senior academic positions, and that violating them can lead to resignation. For both academic and corporate settings, this is a signal that having an internal AI usage policy is not enough – what matters is compliance with it and cooperation during any subsequent review.
Two audiences, two different impacts
What this means
For individuals
For authors of academic and professional texts, the case shows that failing to disclose AI assistance in publications can have career consequences, even if it was "only" text revision, code correction, or image editing.
For a business
For institutions and companies, this serves as evidence of reputational and compliance risk: even a senior executive enforcing rules against AI misuse can himself violate disclosure requirements, and insufficient cooperation during an investigation further worsens the situation.
Risks and complianceCheck the original
Event sources
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