Student Shieh shakes up Brown with DOGE-like query, but universities hold fast in defense of admin 'bloat'

University Hall and Van Wyckle Gates at Brown University
Robert Barnett via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

A conservative student journalist who roiled Brown University in March with a DOGE-like investigation of administrator efficacy was cleared of disciplinary charges under university policies, at least for now, WPRI reported yesterday.

In mid-March 2025, Brown sophomore Alex Shieh emailed more than 3,800 university staff—including administrators, but not faculty, nor students—with a DOGE-inspired query, "Describe what tasks you performed in the past week," the free speech-protective Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) reported.

Shieh told WJAR (NBC 10 Providence) that he planned to "use[] information he gathered to launch an online database using artificial intelligence, detailing the different administrators working for the school." Writing under the banner of the conservative Brown Spectator, Shieh was unabashed in advancing his self-described "Bloat@Brown" thesis: that the sky-high price of higher education at Brown—$96,000 annual cost of attendance—could be chalked up in large part to an excess of well compensated staff.

Brown swiftly charged Shieh with conduct infractions, namely, violation of computer use policy and having inflicted "emotional harm" on staff.

The charges come right from the contemporary higher ed playbook. Even mired in the muck of early-20th-century, callow conceptions of academic freedom, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) as soon as the 1990s managed to perceive the misuse of "electronic communication policies," later commonly known as "acceptable use policies," as a constraint on free campus inquiry. FIRE today sometimes considers such policies in its campus free speech rankings.

The "emotional harm" claim is rich: a charge staff are encouraged to assert in a world in which there's no I in Team Corporatocracy, and which the university eagerly backs to suppress dissent. One might think a university would be cognizant of how the charge of "emotional harm"—not actionable in tort for the very reason that the law should not infiltrate and suffocate social interaction in liberal society—feeds the "snowflake" stereotype. But no, higher ed is committed blindly to its moral condescension. 

My own employer has selectively (and unconstitutionally?) enforced a university policy requiring faculty to "accord respect to ... others" (my emphasis). Calling out misfeasance is an offense, notwithstanding state whistleblower policy.

For an institutional home of so many smart people, Brown apparently couldn't see beyond its bubble to anticipate the public firestorm of support for Shieh. Turns out, Americans are fed up with our uniquely-in-the-world outrageous cost of higher education and the refusal of universities, especially well endowed private ones, even to acknowledge the problem, much less part with their wealth to redress it. Whether staff at Brown are too numerous or too well compensated, I can't say; I haven't made a study of it. But Brown's problem is that Shieh's thesis sounds credible. "Bloat@Brown" hit a nerve.

My reaction was exactly what manifested on Reddit. For example, in the r/Professors thread ("sub") "How Do We Feel About Alex Shieh?," in April, biomedical sciences associate professor the_Stick put it much more eloquently (typos corrected) than I could:

I suspect this sub will automatically dismiss him because he is an undergrad, used AI, is brash, likes the idea of DOGE removing inefficient and wasteful positions, has been interviewed by FoxNews, is Asian, dislikes DEI, and intentionally challenges the university structure. 

However, the curious aspect is that he is targeting administrative bloat with his 'investigation,' specifically positions that we on this sub have often complained about for years and years. While he indelicately lumps positions into what he classifies as DEI/woke, he also uses the term "bullshit jobs" which we have discussed here too. He also specifically does NOT target students or faculty but deanlets and administrators with complicated titles that we have made fun of here. I am NOT saying he is 100% correct, but I am saying he is making arguments we have made here for a decade about the ongoing administrative expenditures having priority over things like faculty salary and facility maintenance. His concerns appear to have arisen from working in a flooded room while observing a 50% increase in tuition over the past decade.

While his language is unrefined (as one might expect from an undergrad, even at an Ivy), I am not a big fan of the university response to him either. From various sources, he seems to have asked in his emails what is your job description or what do you actually do (without making a call for justification). We've done that here, and I know many of us have asked some administrators with a strange title what they do. But that email, perhaps because he made so many at once, is being held up as infliction of harm. The idea of misusing publicly available data seems to be a witch hunt. The charge of misrepresenting himself as a journalist goes against idea of citizen and activist journalists which have been recognized much more widely. He might be a jerk, but Brown's response seems exceedingly vindictive in tone so far.

Indeed, before I read Professor the_Stick's missive, just this week, I engaged in an annual tradition of my own: an audit of positions and salaries at my workplace, in the University of Massachusetts, using the state's public and transparent, but difficult to search, online payroll system. I say it's an "annual" tradition, but really it's more often biennial, because I can't stand to have my stomach turned every year.

I would tell you what I found, but ... I don't want to inflict any, uh, emotional harm or disrespect. It must suffice to say that there are a lot of people making a lot more money than the law faculty. Like me, many of them have "Chancellor" in their titles. But I've never seen them in a classroom doing the, you know, educating that universities are so famous for. Nor the research. In fact, many of them I've never seen.

Like the_Stick observed, Shieh's suspicion is neither new nor devoid of merit. It's rather an echo of Benjamin Ginsburg's superb The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters. The 2011 book made waves, inspired demands for reform, and then effected no change whatsoever.

So it's likely to go for Alex Shieh.

Armenia, Azerbaijan maintain tentative ceasefire

Yerevan, Armenia: Opera House at center.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

At the time of this writing, an uneasy but long sought peace is holding in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Reuters has a good overview of the current situation. The history of the conflict, dating to the Soviet era, defies succinct explication. Suffice to say, hard feelings run deep. It's the kind of conflict that claims the lives of soldiers who were born after it started, the kind of intractable tit for tat that has run so long, no one remembers, as if it would matter, who inflicted the first insult.

Baku, Azerbaijan: me in my happy place.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

In an offensive last week, Azerbaijan gained control of disputed territory it had possessed on paper but not on the ground. A deal was struck to trade the surrender of separatists for the peaceable integration of ethnic Armenians into Azerbaijan. Still, the peace has been tested by skirmishes and allegations of human rights violations. Armenian and Azerbaijani authorities have traded accusations and threats. Presently, the ceasefire is holding. But ethnic Armenians untrusting of Azerbaijan's pledge or unwilling to be integrated are migrating by the thousands from the disputed region to Armenia.

Armenian flag, near Yerevan
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

I visited both Armenia and Azerbaijan in the spring. I met young veterans on both sides. Some had fared all right with lighter duties. Many had seen hot conflict and bore scars both physical and emotional.

What saddened me most was how much the vets were the same on both sides: good young people whose lives had been upended. They believed in their causes, but could scarcely cite a motivation besides a string of offenses of the other. A few even acknowledged that they saw themselves across the front lines and felt remorse for being thrust into conflict with people their own age, as foreign to the origins of the war as they were. Vets on both sides spoke of their families' fears for their safety and their own fears that if they have children, they will be drafted into the same cycle of war.

Azerbaijani flag, Baku
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

At risk of oversimplifying the conflict with an outsider's lamentation on the futility of it all, how could I not wonder at the opportunity cost in so much energy and so many lives, and at whether or why a political solution cannot be found to end the fear and sacrifice.

I enjoyed my time in both countries immensely. Both countries boast stunning sights, from Armenia's extraordinary Matenadaran, a library of ancient manuscripts in Yerevan (reminding me of my beloved Old Library at Trinity Dublin), and ancient Temple of Garni, to Azerbaijan's Ateshgah Fire Temple and towering Bibi-Heybat Mosque.

RJ Peltz-Steele
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

In Providence, Rhode Island, this weekend—not meaning to choose sides, but seizing an opportunity—my wife and I went to Armenia Fest RI, where the ex-pat and ethnic Armenian community put on a fabulous celebration of food, music, and culture. The event, on Armenia Street aside the Sts. Vartanantz Armenian Apostolic Church, was well attended despite a pouring rain. Here are some images (RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), savory and sweet.

Denying public access to crash data, did state agency prioritize fear of litigation over public safety?

Map of bicycle and pedestrian accidents
in Providence, R.I., 2009-17, from
Providence Great Streets Master Plan (2020)

Rhode Island authorities appear to have denied public access to road safety data for no reason better than protecting the state from litigation.

For The Providence Journal, Amy Russo reported in June (subscription) on a dispute between the nonprofit advocacy group Providence Streets Coalition (PSC) and the Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT). According to the story, RIDOT denied a PSC request under state public records law for access to crash data.

To justify the denial, RIDOT pointed to federal law and state court precedent allowing denial of a public record request when a litigant seeks to support a negligence claim against the government, Russo reported. But there is no litigation related to the PSC request.

The relevant rule seems to be of the kind known to some freedom of information acts (FOIAs) that seeks to keep the FOIA process apart from discovery in litigation. Such provisions are not necessarily hostile to public access, but ensure that FOIAs don't undermine civil procedure. Usually a litigant in discovery has better access to relevant government-defendant records than a public-record requester has because FOIA exemptions from access don't apply. Sensitive information that might be FOIA-exempt can be subject to a protective order under the rules of civil procedure, but still must be disclosed.

It rather turns the rule on its head, then, for RIDOT to resist disclosure when there is no alternative track in discovery for the requester to demand access. If that's indeed what happened, then RIDOT is almost certainly overreaching. The state has ample protection from lawsuits in sovereign immunity. Typically, states cannot be sued merely for failure to act affirmatively to ensure public safety, nor for exercising discretion to prioritize public safety relative to finite resources.

Rather, a litigant must show that officials were bound to follow a specific legal standard and negligently failed to do so. If that's what's going on, then lawsuits are precisely the appropriate mechanism for injured persons to see their interests vindicated and the state held accountable.

Whatever RIDOT's motive, withholding vital safety data from the public is plainly at cross-purposes with public interest. Russo's story observed that other states, "including Texas, Colorado, Florida, California, and Massachusetts," make crash data public. She interviewed Eric Jackson, head of the Connecticut Transportation Institute and Transportation Safety Research Center at the University of Connecticut, which partnered with the Connecticut Department of Transportation to build a public crash database in 2010.

Connecticut did worry that "attorneys and ambulance chasers are going to come after us and basically say you have the data that's showing you where crashes are occurring," Jackson said. But "[s]o far, ... that hasn't come to fruition."

And Jackson pointed out what should be obvious: If the problem is road safety, then secreting data is hardly the answer.

The PSC-RIDOT matter won't come to court, Russo wrote, because PSC obtained the data it wanted from the City of Providence.

The story is Amy Russo, A Providence Organization Wanted Crash Data To Make Streets Safer. RIDOT Said It's Private, Providence J. (June 26, 2023) (subscription).