More than two years ago, the Phoenix reported the case of Christopher Brown (see " Dissing His Diploma Goodbye? " , This Just In, May 4, 2000), a graduate student at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB). In 1999, after his master’s thesis (the spellbinding " Morphology of Calcium Carbonate: Factors Affecting Crystal Shape " ) had been approved and before it was filed in the university library, Brown appended a two-page " Disacknowledgments " section that hoisted a middle finger at various UCSB faculty, staff, regents — and former California governor Pete Wilson. " I would like to offer special Fuck You’s to the following degenerates, " Brown began, " for being an ever-present hindrance during my graduate career. "

Since that section had not been approved by the thesis committee, the library refused to file the thesis — and UCSB refused to give Brown his degree. It also placed him on academic probation, which prevented him from finding teaching or research work and from receiving financial aid. Brown eventually excised the profanity but otherwise refused to budge. In 2000, under the glare of national media, UCSB grudgingly awarded Brown his degree. But the library still has not catalogued his thesis. Brown sued UCSB, taking his case as high as the United States Court of Appeals. Along the way, he’s benefited from the support of civil-liberties attorney and Phoenix contributor Harvey Silverglate, who in his capacity as co-founder of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has helped Brown find a lawyer and otherwise advocated on his behalf.

Now, in the wake of an adverse decision from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Brown and his attorney will try to bring the case before the Supreme Court. The problem with the Ninth Circuit’s 2-1 decision, Silverglate says, is that it’s based on the 1988 case of Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, in which the Supreme Court ruled that public high schools can censor student newspapers that publish material that runs counter to the mission of the school. Silverglate emphatically disagrees with Judge Susan P. Graber’s majority opinion that " the [thesis] committee’s decision [not to approve the thesis with the " Disacknowledgments " section] was reasonably related to a legitimate pedagogical objective: teaching the student the proper format for a scientific paper. "

" First, " says Silverglate, " at the college and university levels, students are deemed to be adults. There is a huge difference between high school and college. At the college level, academic freedom kicks in full force. The Ninth Circuit completely glosses over that by using a high-school case as a precedent for college censorship. Second, the notion that a ‘Disacknowledgment’ section which is not part of the academic thesis is under the school’s pedagogical control is a very dangerous expansion. This is a real stretch of the whole concept of what ‘pedagogical’ means. The implication here is that the school has a pedagogical interest in making sure they don’t get criticized. That’s a joke. "

Should the Supreme Court agree to hear the case, Silverglate has good reason to hope the outcome will be in Brown’s favor. " My own suspicion is that the judges [of the Ninth Circuit] were offended by two things that Brown did, and they reacted emotionally, rather than intellectually, " he says. " They didn’t like the fact that in his original disacknowledgment he used profanity. Second, they were offended by the fact that he tricked the thesis committee by not showing them the disacknowledgment section with the original thesis. "

Things should be different, he says, in Washington: " The Supreme Court has shown, over a long history, that it’s willing to get past unpleasantness and get right to the heart of the First Amendment. Most free-speech cases involve controversial or off-color or downright degrading speech. Judges in lower courts sometimes get stuck at the ‘Fuck You’s.’ "