Brown University has accused a student journalist of trademark violations for sending a Department of Government Efficiency-inspired email asking administrators to explain what they do all day.
As of Friday, the school was charging sophomore Alex Shieh for illicitly using “Brown” in the name of his independent conservative publication, replacing earlier charges that he emotionally harmed employees and misrepresented himself as a journalist.
He is scheduled to defend himself against that charge and the claim he violated unspecified IT rules at a Wednesday disciplinary hearing.
“I think it’s retaliation, plain and simple, and they’re grasping at straws to find a reason to punish me,” Mr. Shieh, 20, told The Washington Times. “If it was really a concern about the trademark, they would also be enforcing it against the Brown Daily Herald, an independent liberal student publication.”
Mimicking an email that Elon Musk’s DOGE sent to federal workers, Mr. Shieh asked 3,805 administrators at the Ivy League campus in a March 18 email to “describe what tasks you performed in the past week” with the purpose of understanding what his $93,046 yearly tuition and fees pay for.
Mr. Shieh, an Asian American computer science and economics major from New Hampshire, said he received about 20 responses to his email, ranging from hostile to profane. He later published the names and titles of employees in a database on his publication’s website under the categories “DEI,” “redundant” and “bull——” jobs.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a Philadelphia free-speech group tracking Mr. Shieh’s situation, has urged Brown administrators in two letters to drop the investigation due to their inability to cite the rules he violated.
“Brown’s trademark argument appears to be based on a flawed understanding of the relevant law and its own policy,” Dominic Coletti, a FIRE program officer, wrote Thursday night in the latest letter. “Moreover, its last-minute addition strongly suggests that Brown’s alleged concern about trademark infringement is no more than a smokescreen for Brown’s desire to punish Shieh for his expression.”
Mr. Coletti also said the Brown Spectator, a longtime independent publication Mr. Shieh helped to revive, is a registered nonprofit and that the university has not registered the “Brown” wordmark for use with media publications.
“Courts have repeatedly held that the First Amendment protects the use of trademarked names for non-commercial purposes with no substantial likelihood of confusion,” Mr. Coletti said.
The disciplinary hearing scheduled for Wednesday could result in Brown placing Mr. Shieh on probation, a formal reprimand that he said could hinder his participation in campus activities. He has threatened to file a lawsuit if the university does so.
In an emailed statement to The Times, Brown spokesman Brian E. Clark said student privacy laws prevented him from commenting on the charges but said Mr. Shieh will “have ample opportunity to provide information.”
“Despite continued public reporting that frames this as a free speech issue, it absolutely is not,” Mr. Clark said. “Brown’s review centers on whether improper use of non-public Brown data or non-public data systems violated law or policy.”
He said the Rhode Island campus has acted “in complete accordance with free expression guarantees and appropriate procedural safeguards.”
According to a page on the Brown Spectator website, Mr. Shieh sent the March 18 email to learn why the elite school charges $93,046 a year in tuition but has a $46 million “structural budget deficit.”
The page identifies 49 administrators in “potentially illegal” diversity, equity and inclusion positions that it blamed for the Trump administration canceling $510 billion in federal grants to the school last month.
Rep. Troy Nehls, Texas Republican, sided with Mr. Shieh in a Friday morning letter that asked Brown to explain how it uses its $7.2 billion endowment to “improve the student experience or bring down tuition.”
“I urge you to reconsider any disciplinary action taken against Mr. Shieh and to reaffirm Brown University’s commitment to protecting the free expression of all its students,” Mr. Nehls wrote, according to a Fox News report.
