Brown University has cracked down on the Brown Spectator, a right-leaning student newspaper, hitting the paper with charges of trademark violations just weeks after a Spectator board member created a website exposing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) officials.
Associate Dean Kirsten Wolfe charged the Spectator with “violating Brown’s ‘Name Use, Trademark, and Licensing Policy’ for having the word ‘Brown’ in the name of our independent non-profit and our website domain,” Brown sophomore Alex Shieh, a reporter and board member for the Spectator, told Fox News on Thursday. On Wednesday, the board members sat for a disciplinary hearing over the charges.
“This isn’t about trademarks. This is about retaliation,” Shieh wrote in a post on X, calling the charges “the latest measure in [Brown’s] crusade against independent student journalism.” The university will make its ruling in the coming weeks, according to Fox.
“There’s a reason every student newspaper in the country alludes to their school in its name without issue,” Shieh wrote, noting that the university has not charged the Brown Daily Herald.
Brown did not respond to Fox News’s request for comment.
Shieh angered Brown officials in March by launching the online database Bloat@Brown, which exposes what he calls redundant, “bullshit,” and “legally questionable” administrative jobs at the Ivy league school. Seeking to understand Brown’s high tuition, Shieh also emailed 3,805 non-faculty Brown employees asking, “What do you do all day?” Few employees took it well, with “event specialist” José Mendoza responding, “Fuck off.”
Wolfe, another recipient, accused Shieh of causing “emotional distress for several University employees” and said she had started investigating him.
Shieh said he wants to investigate DEI policies at Brown after President Donald Trump signed executive orders banning DEI at the federal level and withheld millions in federal funding from universities for failing to abolish such programs.
In April, Brown threatened disciplinary action against Shieh for accurately saying that the Trump administration plans to pull $510 million in federal funding over the school’s DEI policies. Administrators accused Shieh of “publishing and promoting false information,” even though the White House had confirmed the funding freeze.
Shieh told Fox News following the Wednesday hearing that Brown is singling out the right-leaning newspaper.
“The timing and selective targeting of the Spectator but not the Herald make it apparent to us that these latest charges are an attempt to silence student voices critical of university administration, not a real trademark concern,” he said.
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