Free speech

Dissing his diploma goodbye?

by Mike Miliard

Grad student Chris Brown had some bones to pick with his school, the University of California at Santa Barbara. But he opted to wait until his thesis was approved before publicly venting his spleen. Just before his 73-page treatise on abalone shells was archived in the library, Brown tacked on a "disacknowledgments" section that railed against UCSB graduate-school staff ("fascists . . . the largest argument against higher education there has ever been"), faculty (one prof was berated for "arrogance and proclivity at being an ass"), and even California governor Pete Wilson ("a supreme government jerk"). But he ran into a problem. UCSB is now withholding Brown's degree until he removes the offending section.

Says Brown: nothin' doin'.

To aid his cause, Brown has established a Web site (www.disacknowledged.org -- since censored by UCSB) and enlisted Boston civil-liberties attorney and Phoenix contributor Harvey Silverglate. He's not Brown's attorney, but Silverglate helped Brown find one. And, on behalf of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), of which he is vice-president, he's written several letters to UCSB. As far as Silverglate is concerned, the school is guilty of "the clearest possible violation of the First Amendment you can imagine."

Because Brown's thesis was approved before he added the disacknowledgment section, Silverglate holds that "it's clear the only reason they won't give the degree is that he said bad things about the university. . . . Had he put [the disacknowledgment] in initially, they would have lied and come up with a pretext saying that academically [the thesis] was inadequate, that the disacknowledgment had nothing to do with it. He deprived them of the ability to lie, which is really what has them angry."

UCSB's claims that Brown's words leave the university open to libel charges are groundless, says Silverglate: "Ridiculous. An acknowledgment is universally understood as being the views of the author. It's absolutely clear that it's not the view of the university." And what of the members of UCSB's own Academic Freedom Committee, who accuse Brown of cheapening the cause of free speech by trying to sneak his addendum past the school? "It tells you something about the hollow shell that academic freedom is at UCSB," Silverglate says.

Ultimately, Silverglate is sure the case is open-and-shut and will be resolved with a motion for summary judgment -- an adjudication that avoids a trial. What is most unsettling to him, however, is that "this is part and parcel of a trend on virtually every college campus in America, where administrators believe they have the right to control students' speech for their own convenience."