The Academic XXXstablishment

Making its break from reality official, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) named as its new chief a college administrator who is famous for sponsoring conferences on sex at a state university.

Last year, the AAUP objected when the University of South Florida dismissed a professor that the U.S. government arrested for working with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Additionally, the AAUP has consistently opposed the Academic Bill of Rights constructed by Students for Academic Freedom.

“The danger of such guidelines is that they invite diversity to be measured by political standards that diverge from the academic criteria of the scholarly profession,” the AAUP’s statement on the bill reads. In its stated position, the AAUP ignores survey after survey showing that liberal Democrats hold an overwhelming majority of professorships nationwide.

The AAUP gave its new head, Dr. Roger W. Bowen, an award for defending academic freedom back in 1998. What did Dr. Bowen do to deserve this prize?

Dr. Bowen okayed two sex conferences at the State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz in 1997, soon after the school named him president. The first of these conferences was entitled “Revolting Behavior” and featured workshops on sex toys and sado-masochism. Dr. Bowen not only signed off on the conference but also sat in the audience, Campus Report revealed at the time.

He was also there to show moral support for the next sex conference that he approved, Campus Report noted. This event “featured performance artists like Carolee Schmeeman, who showed slides of herself naked with snakes slithering over her body,” according to Campus Report.

Dr. Bowen’s approval of, and attendance at, these two conferences may very well have been passive. On the other hand, he very proactively sought to stage a SUNY-New Paltz production of Eve Ensler’s long-running play named after a female body part, Eric Langborgh revealed in Campus Report.

This play features a scene in which a teenage girl molested by a lesbian calls the experience “a good rape.” In promoting the production to the college council at SUNY-New Paltz, Dr. Bowen said the show was like “other plays students have performed, such as Peter Pan.”

In naming Dr. Bowen as its commander-in-chief, the AAUP, a once-staid professors guild, has now gone completely off the deep end.

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.