Threat of discipline can ‘chill speech – and constitute censorship,’ FIRE responds
A Brown University student journalist who sought to investigate administrative bloat says he is now facing disciplinary charges at the Ivy League school.
Alex Shieh told The Washington Times on Wednesday that the university accused him of misrepresenting himself as a reporter for The Brown Spectator, a conservative student newspaper, in emails to staff asking about their jobs.
A university spokesperson previously told The College Fix that the Spectator is not a recognized student organization. The spokesperson also said Shieh’s report on the Spectator website included “derogatory descriptions of job functions of named individuals.”
However, Shieh believes the university is just trying to retaliate against him for his investigation, according to The Washington Times:
He said Brown has also accused him of violating operational rules by publishing the names and positions of staff members on the Spectator’s website.
“The disciplinary charges are retaliatory,” Mr. Shieh, a 20-year-old computer science and economics major, told The Washington Times. “I think they’re trying to silence criticism.”
Mr. Shieh said he plans to defend himself at the meeting, which has not yet been scheduled. The process could result in the Rhode Island campus placing him on probation, a formal reprimand that he said could hinder his participation in campus activities.
He also said he may file a lawsuit if the university follows through with its disciplinary threat.
Meanwhile, Brown spokesperson Brian Clark told the newspaper the case is not about free speech.
“In spite of what has been reported publicly framing this as a free speech issue, it absolutely is not,” Clark said in a statement Thursday. ”At the center of Brown’s review are questions focused on whether improper use of non-public Brown data, non-public data systems and/or targeting of individual employees violated law or policy.”
He also said the university’s actions are “in complete accordance with free expression guarantees and appropriate procedural safeguards.”
On Wednesday, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression sent a letter to Brown President Christina Paxon urging the university to drop the investigation.
“While Shieh’s reporting may have annoyed some Brown employees, it is protected by the university’s strong and laudable free expression promises and cannot be the subject of an investigation,” FIRE Program Officer Dominic Coletti wrote.
The letter cited the Rhode Island New Voices Act, which protects the freedom of the press and free speech for student journalists.
Even though Shieh identified himself as a reporter for the Spectator, “Brown continues to impermissibly investigate Shieh for misrepresentation,” Coletti wrote.
He described the university’s argument that Shieh misrepresented himself because the Spectator is not a recognized student organization as “nonsensical.”
“That the Spectator is effectively in ‘startup’ mode does nothing to lessen its reporters’ right to freedom of the press,” Coletti wrote.
Such investigations and the threat of discipline ultimately “chill speech – and constitute censorship,” he wrote.
As The Fix previously reported:
[Shieh] developed a database published at Bloat@Brown that uses an AI algorithm to “analyze each administrator’s impact on the university.” The database is on The Brown Spectator’s website. …
According to his research, the university employs one full-time staff/administrative employee for every two full-time undergraduates.
And that’s “despite budget shortfalls that leave dorms flooding when it rains,” he wrote at Bloat@Brown.
He suspects some positions, including “diversity, equity, and inclusion” roles, are unnecessary, but without more information, he could not say for sure.
So, on March 18, he emailed 3,805 administrators, asking for more details about their jobs.
The email included a link to his analysis, which placed administrators in one of three categories: “legality, redundancy, and bullshit jobs,” and asked each to “comment on your current rating in our database,” The Chronicle of Higher Education reports. Shieh based his investigation and terminology on the book “Bullshit Jobs: A Theory” by the late anthropologist David Graeber, according to the report.
MORE: Student journalist started looking into administrative bloat. Now he’s being investigated.
IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: A gate displays the name of Brown University. Brown University/Facebook
Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on Twitter
