A professors union's sanction against a Florida college shows how liberal dogma has taken "ruthless" control over higher education, a school trustee told Fox News.
"I consider it laughable," New College of Florida Board of Trustees member Mark Bauerlein said. "We can't trust the [American Association of University Professors]. I actually have no hope for the AAUP being reformed and letting up because they're led by ideologues at this point."
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The union voted to sanction the Sarasota school last week, about a year after Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed six board of trustee members, including Bauerlein, as part of his argument that the school was prioritizing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts over education. The Florida Republican praised the board's moves in the months following the appointments, while an AAUP investigation preceding the vote accused New College of politicization and violating the organization's standards.
Bauerlein said the probe and sanction vote showed AAUP's own ideological agenda.
"The problem is, when the entire system reinforces these distortions, when the organizations that are supposed to be the watchdogs against lies end up being leading propagandists of those lies, we're in big trouble," Bauerlein said, adding that the investigation showed "just how ruthless the left is in its control of higher education."
"The dogmas have to be satisfied before anything, and that invariably is going to lead to dysfunction, bad leadership," continued Bauerlein, who's also a professor emeritus at Emory University. "When you get bad leadership, all the dysfunctions of 19-year-olds on college campuses — who are just fractious personalities as it is — are going to be unleashed, and I see the elite campuses have painted themselves into a corner."
When DeSantis appointed the new board members, he argued New College hadn't "been successful" and was facing decreased enrollment in part because the school "embraced" DEI. Seven months later, he praised the board for "succeeding in its mission to eliminate indoctrination" by replacing "far-left faculty" with educators more focused on classical education, eliminating equity-focused positions and significantly increasing first-year enrollment for Black and Hispanic students.
But AAUP's monthlong investigation, launched just after the appointments and published in December, found New College promoted an "aggressively ideological and politically motivated agenda." It also said the school committed "egregious and extensive violations of AAUP principles and standards" for improperly denying tenure, interfering with academic freedom and eliminating programs like gender studies.
Bauerlein criticized the union's investigation, saying he was never given the opportunity to give his side.
"You're interviewing all these witnesses, family, friends and never interviewing the prime suspects," he told Fox News. "If you're going to do an investigation, you should interview all the parties involved."
"I would have given them an academic rationale for gender theory not being an independent discipline," Bauerlein continued. "But they didn’t ask me."
New College criticized AAUP in response to the sanction vote.
"The AAUP lacks the authority to sanction New College of Florida, or any college or university for that matter," New College wrote in response to the sanction vote. "The recent announcement from the AAUP is a headline grab, echoing the sensationalistic tone of their report issued over two months ago."
AAUP did not respond to a request for comment.
Bauerlein also criticized how colleges have handled the Israel-Hamas War and students and faculties' responses.
"When you bring activism on campus, the intellectual decay begins," Bauerlein said. "It is an intellectual corruption. It's contrary to academic values."
Nationwide, universities have faced fallout, including from donors, for their statements — or prolonged or lack of statements — on Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the Jewish state's retaliation in Gaza. Some colleges have faced intense criticism over their handling of antisemitic incidents, threats to free speech and campus hostilities since the Middle East conflict began.
Bauerlein accused college students of having a "caricature of knowledge" when discussing conflicts in the Middle East.
"They don't know anything about the Middle Eastern conflict and its history going back over the decades," he said. "What they have out of that is an emotional identification that can divide the world into oppressors and oppressed."
"It's a little Manichaean drama that they're operating that appeals to the adolescent mind," Bauerlein continued. "What we want to do with higher education is to lead them out of the adolescent mind."
But as colleges face increasing scrutiny over ideology, antisemitism and free speech, the "formerly credible" and biased AAUP lasered in on New College, Bauerlein told Fox News. He said the professor's union should be more focused on denouncing bureaucracies at academic institutions and getting educators better job security with higher pay.
"I would say to the AAUP, get out of the ideological game here," Bauerlein said.
"This isn't right, and it's going to lead to ever more coercive strictures on people's judgment," Bauerlein said. "Peer review is going to be corrupted, academic admissions offices are going to become hives of mendacity, and it's not going to stop."
