AU Perspective: Orange & Blue Pattern and Practice of Retaliation

Legitimacy and credibility are required inputs for successful leadership; little worth to those who subjugate others in a kleptocracy. This explains much occurring at AU according to productive (non-parasitic) faculty who have contacted me after recent columns.

AU's BoT installed Vini Nathan as provost in May 2023 after the original job posting stated the interim provost would be ineligible for the permanent position. Dr. Nathan was the interim provost. The Board gave her the job anyway. The Board does not govern by consent. The Board rules regardless of policies, procedures, faculty handbook, with unique disdain and disregard for the U.S. Constitution. Question their chosen instrument and you'll be dealt with as public spectacle.

April Fool's 2026

In true April Fool's spirit [4-1-26] Provost Nathan initiated formal dismissal proceedings against Department of Economics Professor Michael Stern, citing "a repeated pattern of disruptive and insubordinate behaviors." A three-member faculty committee has 30 days to find "sufficient credible evidence" to proceed under Section 3.9.2 of the Faculty Handbook.

In November 2022, a federal jury in Opelika unanimously found AU officials violated Professor Stern's 1st Amendment rights with malice and reckless indifference, awarding roughly $645,000 including $500,000 in punitive damages. With attorney's fees awarded to Stern, Auburn's bill to Alabama taxpayers and students ran well over a million dollars. Less than four years later, the same institution is trying to fire him in a 'repeated pattern' of retaliation.

The Man Auburn Cannot Silence

Long-time readers of past "Auburn Greed" columns know the cast of Lowder (a.k.a. Booby Looter), Felon Hubbard, Crash Leath, and Jay Ticket-Gate Jacobs, et al. I've prayed this criminal syndicate may attenuate over time… it hasn't. For a more complete Stern story (re)read prior columns and my most recent AU Perspective [https://www.alabamagazette.com/story/2026/03/15/opinion/au-perspective-auburn-trustees-impose-the-creed/10431.html]. Stern's saga began in 2008 when he spoke with a local reporter about the Charles Koch Foundation's influence on AU's Econ Department. In retaliation, Auburn moved the economics department into the College of Liberal Arts in 2009. Stern won tenure by appeal in 2010 and was elected chair by his colleagues.

In 2014, Stern raised alarms about extraordinary clustering of student athletes (almost exclusively African American football players) in the public administration major. Baltimore Raven John Urschel calculated the odds of random concentration at one in three undecillion. Stern shared documents with the Wall Street Journal, which reported [August 2015] athletics officials lobbied to keep the major alive after a faculty committee recommended its discontinuation, warning eliminating the program would hurt "the graduation success rate numbers for our student-athletes." Another official appeared to offer funding Stern characterized as an "institutional bribe."

For this public service, Stern was stripped of his chairmanship in May 2018. The 2022 jury found Dean Joseph Aistrup acted with malice in removing him. What did Auburn learn? Apparently, nothing about respecting the US Constitution, but everything about finding new mechanisms for prevaricating, post-literate administrators to punish professors who dare speak truth.

The February Surprise

On Friday February 13, 2026, the AU BoT adopted the "Auburn University Governance and Authority Policy," buried on page 80 of a 164-page Board packet and presented by Chairperson Quentin Riggins as agenda item D.4. The resolution elevated the Auburn Creed above all conflicting prior policies, revoked previous delegations over faculty personnel procedures, and waived "any and all applicable notice and timing requirements" for its adoption. President Chris Roberts never mentioned it to the Senate and skipped the February Senate meeting four days later. Straight from the Lee County Corruption playbook. Bury the explosive material and hope nobody reads past page 79. The policy also requires Auburn personnel to adhere to the Creed, including "walking humbly with my God." A State University cannot compel religious expression as a condition of employment. The policy's real purpose is now becoming clear...

Connecting the Dots

Seven weeks after the Board tries to unconstitutionally revoke faculty personnel protections, Provost Nathan moved to fire the one professor who has already proven in federal court Auburn University maliciously retaliates against faculty speech. In October 2023, Stern submitted a formal proclamation to the University Faculty exposing Nathan's illegitimacy. Five months after, Nathan acted to block Prof Stern from assuming the chair position in the Economics Department and he subsequently received a threatening letter in August 2024 trying to intimidate him. The provost is judge, jury, and executioner in a case where she is obviously a personally interested party. It's the Alabama politburo way. Under principles of due process going back to English common law, no person shall sit in judgment of a case in which (s)he has a personal stake.

Meanwhile Dean Aistrup was never disciplined and landed a comfortable faculty position in Political Science, currently with an astounding $295,000 a year salary. Hyeongwoo Kim, installed as department head after Stern's wrongful removal, received a 12% permanent salary increase, a 9% additional raise within months, and a special $30,000 boost shortly before Prof Stern’s trial. At Auburn, the whistleblower gets the dismissal proceeding, the civil rights violator gets largesse, and the connected parasites get raises. This is how soviet politburo members reward loyalty and punish dissent, and how the Auburn Greed metastasizes.

Abnormal Circumstances

A righteous Board of Trustees would immediately fire Chris Roberts if he did not force the withdrawal of the proceedings and ask General Counsel what a second federal civil rights verdict looks like when the same plaintiff sues over the repeated malicious retaliation. This corrupt Board will not. But there is a new thread to pull on here. Every Board meeting includes an "executive session" where trustees meet privately with counsel, conversations the Board presumes sit safely behind attorney-client privilege. The well-established crime-fraud exception holds that privilege does not protect communications used to plan or carry out wrongdoing and federal courts have applied this exception to intentional civil rights violations... exactly the kind a jury already found Auburn committed in 2022.

It gets worse for individual trustees. 42 U.S.C. § 1983 was designed to create consequences for the organized suppression of civil rights. Conspiracy statutes apply when two or more persons organize to deprive a citizen of civil rights; it can also create personal liability where indemnification is an act in furtherance of the conspiracy. Not Auburn University. Not insurance. Not the taxpayer. The trustees themselves. Their reputations on a federal court docket. If trustees, the president, the provost and counsel coordinated in relation to the acts carried out against Prof Stern, every one of them could be liable under § 1983 and other applicable conspiracy statutes. Qualified immunity does not apply when the official violates a right "clearly established" at the time.

Stern's case is not isolated. Professor Majdalani in Aerospace Engineering faced dismissal proceedings for speech to the AIAA, and a January 28, 2026 payment of $475,000 for his legal expenses suggests the settled lawsuit cost Auburn millions. In September 2025, Roberts fired employees over social media posts "at odds with Auburn's values," and at least two filed federal 1st Amendment lawsuits. These are the predictable consequence of a governing philosophy which treats dissenting speech as insubordination and the Creed as a loyalty oath.

In Closing

Michael Stern has consistently told the truth when the truth was inconvenient; a federal jury agreed. Now, through an illegitimate provost with a personal grudge and a Board which stripped faculty of their procedural protections... Auburn is trying to finish the job. I pray Professor Stern prevails again. It is a sound forecast that the cost to Auburn and numerous individual administrators and trustees, in dollars and reputation, will be orders of magnitude greater this iteration. The question for Auburn's Board is not whether Stern violated the Auburn Creed. The question is whether AU, in its treatment of Prof. Stern, has violated every righteous principle the Creed purports to represent. The answer, as a federal jury has already determined, is yes.

Deo Volente.

John Sophocleus is a retired Ford Motor Company Warranty & Policy Administrator and a retired Auburn University Instructor of Economics. A former Libertarian candidate for Alabama House and Governor, as well as U.S. House District 3 and US Senate candidate, he's also a monthly Alabama Gazette columnist since 2009.

Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Alabama Gazette staff or publishers.