Dartmouth Provost Resigns After Alleged Undisclosed Use of GPT‑5.6 Pro and Claude Fable 5.1 in Academic Paper

Dartmouth College’s former provost, David Schnell, stepped down after a paper he authored, “Who Wrote This?”, was found to rely heavily on OpenAI’s GPT‑5.6 Pro and Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5.1. Schnell claimed that the AI tools assisted in drafting, editing, and reviewing the manuscript, but he maintained that the final responsibility lay with him and that the work was not a co‑authorship. The paper argued that distinguishing between human‑written and AI‑written text is overly simplistic and that a blend of human judgment and AI output is normal. Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock announced Schnell’s resignation, emphasizing the need for transparency and the highest standards of disclosure among institutional leaders. The incident highlights the tension between embracing AI’s capabilities and maintaining clear ethical guidelines in academic publishing.