The College Fix

A Brown University student says he is being investigated by administrators after he set out to resurrect a conservative student newspaper this spring with a break-out article on administrative bloat.

“It seems somewhat retaliatory,” sophomore Alex Shieh (pictured) told The College Fix. “We’re investigating the administration and now the administration wants to investigate us.”

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression labeled the university’s actions as “chilling” for free speech and due process.

However, the Ivy League university contends The Brown Spectator is not an active student organization, and Shieh’s questions to its employees included “derogatory descriptions of job functions.”

In a phone interview Friday with The Fix, Shieh said his idea for the investigation was rooted in his belief about the American Dream and the high tuition costs that can be an obstacle to achieving it.

To attend and live at Brown, it costs $93,064 per year – and tuition keeps rising, he said.

“The articles in other school newspapers don’t challenge the administration that much, so I thought it was necessary, along with a group of other people, to bring more free speech to Brown, and bring this issue of bloat specifically,” he said.

A computer science and economics major, he 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.

“Administrators were analyzed in three domains, legality, redundancy, and bullshit jobs, and those who raised the algorithm’s suspicion have been flagged for manual review,” he wrote at Bloat@Brown.

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.

Two days later, the university informed Shieh that he was under review, FIRE Program Officer Dominic Coletti told The Fix in an email Friday.

“The Preliminary Review is the university’s way of evaluating allegations before there are formal charges/threat of disciplinary action,” Coletti said.

University officials alleged Shieh may have “emotionally harmed” several employees and “misrepresented” himself as a reporter for The Brown Spectator, according to a report on FIRE’s website.

Brown spokesperson Brian Clark told The Fix that the website linked to in the email also “appeared to improperly use data accessed through a University technology platform to target individual employees by name and position description.”

“The website included derogatory descriptions of job functions of named individuals at every job level,” Clark said in an email Monday.

“While the emails were framed as a journalistic inquiry, the supposed news organization identified in the email has had no active status at Brown for more than a decade, and no news article resulted,” he told The Fix.

When asked if there is a procedure or policy that a student news organization must follow in order to be recognized by the university, Clark said yes.

“The Undergraduate Council of Students manages the process by which student groups can apply for recognition,” he said, pointing to the council’s website.

However, Coletti at FIRE disagreed with the university’s assessment, pointing to a statement on The Brown Spectator website announcing its re-launch.

“That Brown doesn’t recognize the student news outlet doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist,” Coletti said. “… The university doesn’t recognize The New York Times, but that does not make the outlet illegitimate, even if a Brown student wrote for them.”

Asked about the university’s contention that “no news article resulted,” Coletti told The Fix: “Journalists do not always publish their work in an article, and their editorial choice to use an infographic does not undermine the legitimacy of their investigations. Beyond that, the university is wrong on the facts. Shieh did include what I would call an article on the Bloat@Brown website’s About page.”

The university also alleged Shieh “improperly use[d] data,” and asked him to “return any confidential information” and “provide evidence he deleted” it, according to FIRE:

[Shieh] pointed out that even if he did have any confidential information — an allegation the university has not begun to substantiate — providing evidence that he deleted it would also provide Brown incriminating evidence that he had the information in the first place — violating Brown’s promise that students have a right against self-incrimination.

Brown’s spokesperson declined to comment on the specifics of the investigation, citing privacy laws.

“Due to federal law protecting student privacy, the University cannot provide additional details, even to refute the inaccuracies and mischaracterizations that have been made public,” Clark told The Fix. “We are treating this matter with the utmost seriousness.”

At this point, Coletti told The Fix he is not aware of any disciplinary action against Shieh. He said FIRE has not formally reached out to Brown at this point, and it is not representing Shieh as a legal client.

However, as a matter of individual freedom, “Brown’s response flies in the face of its due process and free expression guarantees, and threatens to chill student reporting on campus,” Coletti said.

“As FIRE has said before, universities that guarantee their students free expression cannot base investigations on the very speech they promise to protect,” he said.

To Shieh, the administration appears to have double standards when it comes to students’ freedoms.

Recently, university President Christina Paxson sent out a letter supporting academic freedom; her statement pertained to pro-Palestinian students who are “facing a lot of heat these days,” he said.

Between that letter and the situation he is facing, it seems like Brown’s leaders are “only interested in protecting some speech – and not what questions their power,” he told The Fix.

MORE: Yale terminates scholar’s contract for alleged ties to terrorist organization

IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: Brown University sophomore Alex Shieh is investigating administrative bloat at his school. FIRE

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