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Auburn professor awarded damages for university punishment over published comments about football program
By Scott Green
Published:
An Alabama jury found that an Auburn professor, Michael Stern, was unjustly targeted after making comments about the concentration of athletes in one of the university’s administration programs, per AL.com’s Ruth Serven Smith. Stern was awarded $645,837 in damages after the two-week trial that found the former dean unduly punished him.
Stern has had a history of speaking out against perceived issues regardless of the implications from other staff members. In 2008, he reportedly spoke out about potential problems with donors in Auburn’s economics department.
Stern in 2014 made several statements about the demographic of student-athletes in the public administration department. Then in 2015, The Wall Street Journal published that the department was almost 50% athletes which included many of the top football players.
The Wall Street Journal quoted an official email that stated: “If the public administration program is eliminated, the [graduation success rate] numbers for our student-athletes will likely decline.”
Three years later in 2018, Stern would be asked to step down as the chair of the economic department as a result of his statements. He would then file a suit against the university that asserted he had been denied his First Amendment rights.
Stern is still a professor at Auburn after being awarded for damages aimed at making up for lost salary and benefits.
Scott Green has been covering and following college football since 2017. After primarily covering the Georgia Bulldogs, Scott began to branch out and build relationships with other national media members. He played football and graduated from the LaGrange College in 2014. He currently is enlisted in the Georgia Army National Guard after deploying with them in 2019 to Afghanistan.
