Ten trustees of Truett McConnell University have gone public with their reasons for voting to retain Emir Caner as president while the board majority voted to fire him last Sept. 25.
According to these writers, trustees are set to elect a new president Feb. 2. The name of that candidate has not been made public.
The 10 wrote an opinion piece published by The Christian Post, a conservative online outlet. The headline reads, “Why We Voted (Unsuccessfully) to Keep Emir Caner as President of Truett McConnell University.”
President Emir Caner in the YouTube viceo
Caner was removed as president after being put on a leave of absence by the board while trustees investigated claims he mishandled knowledge of sexual harassment and abuse on campus, mainly by former Vice President Bradley Reynolds.
(BNG is currently the defendant in a defamation suit brought by a different former faculty member at Truett McConnell related to this matter.)
According to these authors, 19 trustees voted to remove Caner, “believing that he had covered up the reported accusation that one of the university’s vice presidents had been engaged in an ongoing sexual impropriety with a student who became one of the school’s employees.”
The purpose of the Christian Post article is to give a minority report, they said.
“There seemed to be an orchestrated attempt to bring Caner’s presidency to an end, and some trustees may have voted to release him from his responsibilities at TMU because of the widespread perception that prevailed,” the article claims. “The trustees received emails just prior to our meetings alleging that hundreds of graduates were calling for his termination. Some students were mobilized to picket at one of our trustee meetings. We appreciated their interest in what was going on in our meeting, but we resolved to focus on the facts rather than what others perceived.”
The minority group believed Caner when he “vehemently affirmed that he dismissed the offending vice president as soon as he was given conclusive evidence that he was guilty of engaging in a sinful relationship.”
According to these 10 trustees, the university’s attorney told trustees “there was nothing amiss in President Caner’s leadership or handling of the issue” and “no complaint (was) filed with the Title IX office at the school indicating any sexual abuse.”
That claim cannot be independently verified because such communication would have happened in closed trustee meetings.
The minority trustees also claim an independent investigator found “no evidence to prove that Caner knew about the sexual abuse, that he covered up any sexual impropriety, or handled the situation improperly.”
They add: “To our dismay, the investigator presented his report to the trustees verbally without furnishing board members with a printed copy of his report. It was difficult to accept that his findings were reduced to verbal generalizations without actual documentation but presented as a compelling rationale for terminating the president.”
According to their article, Caner “was not given the opportunity to defend himself.” That appears to mean the former president was not given an opportunity to respond to the investigator’s report.
The minority trustees praised Caner for growing enrollment and income and expanding academic offerings in the 17 years of his leadership.
“While the focus has been on the moral failure of a former vice president, this does not in any way diminish the fact that Dr. Caner has added remarkably gifted and deeply spiritual faculty members throughout his tenure,” they wrote.
The 10 trustees laud Caner as a good leader for some other school: “Dr. Emir Caner is a winsome Christian gentleman. He is extremely intelligent and articulate, has great leadership ability, and he would be a great asset to any educational institution, Christian organization or entity.”
The column is signed by Keith Kelly, James Usry, Patricia Canup, Johnny Nix, Rod Martin, Matt Brady, Bob Pearle, Geoff Prows, J. Gerald Harris and Richard Manous.