free speech victory . former student criticizing UCLA

facilitated by the organization, FIRE, a former UCLA student was vindicated in his RIGHT to criticize the UCLA and to use the term "UCLA" in his website name, since it wasn't implying that it was an official UCLA site.

courts have long established this right (also the right to parody in using a name, see the jerry falwell/larry flynt case), but UCLA attempted to strongarm this former student, and was smacked down and relented upon challenge.

the right to criticize a person, company, or organization is an absolutely essential part of the first amendment. libel/slander laws do allow redress for those falsely accused, but in general, anybody has the right to set up a website saying "john doe" (insert name of disliked person) "sucks" and be as mean as one wants. as long as one does not libel, slander, or make "true threats" this is an absolute right.

source:http://www.volokh.com/posts/1250874960.shtml
cite follows:
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has withdrawn its unconstitutional demand that a former student take down a website criticizing the university. UCLA had demanded that Tom Wilde shut down his private, non-commercial website, ucla-weeding101.info, by last Monday.... esterday, only a few hours after FIRE publicized Wilde’s case, UCLA informed FIRE that its demands against Wilde were being withdrawn.

“Kudos to UCLA for quickly realizing that the First Amendment protects criticism of the university -- even online,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “UCLA’s prompt and welcome recognition of the First Amendment freedoms at stake should send a powerful message to other California public colleges that have made similar threats, such as Santa Rosa Junior College, that the law does not support their position.”

Wilde launched the website ucla-weeding101.info last month to argue that he was “weeded out” of UCLA’s Graduate School of Education for his dissenting views. On August 6, UCLA Senior Campus Counsel Patricia M. Jasper sent Wilde a letter arguing that the domain name constituted “trademark infringement and dilution” and suggested the website might be a criminal offense under the California Education Code. Jasper also wrote that UCLA was acting in part to protect its “reputation” and ordered Wilde to shut down the site by August 17.

FIRE immediately wrote UCLA Chancellor Gene D. Block, pointing out that no reasonable person would mistake Wilde’s site as being an official UCLA site or having the college’s endorsement, and that the First Amendment protects the use of organization names on “cybergriping” sites. Further, although a disclaimer for such an obviously unaffiliated site is legally unnecessary, the site now contains a prominent statement explicitly alerting readers that the site is “not supported, endorsed, or authorized by UCLA or the University of California.”

On August 18, Jasper notified FIRE that FIRE’s letter was under review and that she “anticipate having a fuller response ... in the very near future.” Yesterday, FIRE took the case public, and within hours Jasper faxed FIRE to say that, while the university would appreciate more changes to the site, “n any event, the University hereby withdraws the demands made upon Mr. Wilde in our letter to him of August 6, 2009.” ...

On the other hand, the issue is pointless.

I've seen a student advance to candidacy (not in my dept.) and then piss off his advisor and faculty. He could force them to re-assemble a new dissertation committee, but what advising would he get? What kinds of recommendations? I advised him to leave.

I saw another get close to her diss. conclusion (in my dept.) and then piss off her advisor. The advisor discovered, upon rereading earlier chapters, that the research was all wrong--what was she thinking? She'd have to redo it. After flattery, taking psychological and emotional abuse, and generally sucking up and behaving herself the student finally got off with a quick, superficial rewrite. Nothing was changed but a bit of the emphasis and some punctuation, and it was ok. "Care and feeding of dissertation advisor" should be a proseminar.

In another case, a research assistant was working for his advisor (in my dept.). After a couple of years, the dept. secretary asked if he'd checked his grades recently. He said 'no', the professor, emeritus, would certainly have told him during one of their monthly research review sessions if things weren't acceptable. It was all pass/no-pass. It seems that the professor had been giving him incompletes, which all lapsed, after so many months, to Fs. The 4.0 he had upon advancing to candidacy was down to 3.1 or thereabouts, and in a month or two he'd be on probation as another incomplete lapsed. He asked what he needed to do to remove the incompletes, and the professor said that he didn't approve of the research at all, but his hints had been ignored. The research wasn't in keeping with the "traditions of the field", and to get rid of 3 years of incompletes he'd need to essentially finish his dissertation, on a new topic acceptable to this professor, within 6 months. Now, this student was in a bind: Even if he got a new advisor, those incompletes would lapse to Fs, while Ps (for pass) from his new advisor wouldn't count towards his GPA. He would fail out within a year unless he took courses to counter the Fs, but that would mean being registered, taking courses, working, and making no progress towards his dissertation . . . . He got a job as a programmer and went into IT.

I overhead a musicology professor--sexist to the core--lament his sorry state. He had a girl student, a single mother, whom he had believed was a lightweight and would never finish. She was too concerned with her little girl, and besides, mothers make bad researchers and professors. So he approved her prospectus and as chapters came in over the year or more he plopped them in a file folder, unread, said they were fine "except for some details" and let the entire thing slide. Then he humored her when she applied for jobs since there were so many outstanding candidates--and he named them, all men--and so few jobs that year. She, to his surprised, submitted her conclusion, and waited. Then the big news was that she got a tenure-track job, "the" job, a job at the top school among those hiring, but it required that she have PhD in hand. It was early May and the job started on 7/1 or 8/1. He finally read the dissertation, and said that in chapter 1 it came to a conclusion he found preposterous, it couldn't be right, and from then on the diss didn't follow the prospectus. He had no choice but to tell her to rewrite and resubmit the prospectus with the appropriate changes, and argue for the changes without making reference to her later research. Meanwhile, he knew the runner up for the job, a nice young man. (I was drinking coffee while grading papers, and had to fight the urge to go over there and pound him senseless. I could have reported him, but hearsay wouldn't have been valid info, and, well, she did depart from her prospectus without getting formal approval.)

My dept. was a basket case. I failed my first PhD comps, and the outside member said that my answers weren't discussed--my loyalty to the field's traditions were. (Yep, that professor was on my committee.) The dept. chair had words with him. I passed upon taking them again, but as I received the news I got an email from my advisor saying he was retiring, and would continue to be my advisor. I submitted my prospectus; I had 6 months to get it accepted or be dismissed from the program. After 5 1/2 months I called, and my advisor reminded me of the 6-months rule and said he no comments on my prospectus because he hadn't read it and had no intention of reading it. He didn't need to--it was *my* job to get it approved, not his. In fact, he'd called a dept. meeting, and intended to motion to have me dismissed. I called the dept. chair, who didn't know this was why he called the meeting, and he stopped it. I had a new advisor, and the 6-month clock was reset . . . de facto abolished. The backstory was that my dept. had been reviewed (it's UCLA policy) for administrative and academic "excellence", and flunked. The dept. got the report weeks before I advanced to candidacy and it called for suspending admissions, anger management for two faculty members (or their retirement!), and receivership pending correction of a long list of problems. My advisor was named, and dutifully retired. He blamed me, a student government activist, for the report, and said, apparently, that I was out to destroy the dept. so I had to go. (During the interviews and writing of the report, I was 3000 miles away, and he knew this.)

A student at another university was about to advance to candidacy when his advisor said she was leaving for a post in Europe. He was not going with her. He applied to where I showed up as a student. In 9 months he passed his MA exams; 12 months later, he advanced to candidacy. A year later he was all but done his dissertation and put it on the shelf since he had guaranteed financial aid for a year; he started doing "other research", going to conferences and writing papers for publication. He was hired, filed his diss, and moved on. (Now he's back in the dept., a really good scholar and, when I knew him, a fairly decent chap.)

At every point the student had a good grievance. Perhaps each student would have won in court. At every point, the student decided to do the wise thing which, in this case, was not to confront evil. Why? Because even if you win your moral point, you lose in practice. You'll get crappy recommendations, shit during dissertation writing. You'll lose all funding, or get the crappiest kind of funding possible. Snafus will happen. You can bitch, fight, scream, etc., etc., and at the end, even after winning, you'll sit back and realize that you lost. The little victory you get will not make up for the lost years, the lost thousands of dollars, or the incredible amount of sweat and work that you've essentially wasted--because even though you've learned a lot, it wasn't edifying or enjoyable, but grief.

In most of these cases I was in a position to bring them up to people who would be concerned, those who should do something. I was grad student prez and VP and was on good terms with the chancellor. I knew the Humanities provost and most of the vice-chancellors. I had been one of the students who interviewed the Humanities dean and who voted to hire her, and met with her regularly. I was on the UCLA Graduate Council and knew the officers in the academic senate, and routinely called in as an informed student rep for budget and planning meetings. In most cases, I could drop by their offices unannounced and ask to see them--and if they weren't in a meeting, they'd open the doors and call for me to come on in. (It really annoyed my dept. chair that if he had a problem I'd have an easier time getting him on the appropriate administrator's schedule than he did, and sometimes knew of things before he did). In any event, I brought these students up, and was told (1) the administrators/academic senate folk were morally obliged to say that the student should file charges, it was his/her right, (2) nothing would happen to improve the students lot in the least because the burden of proof is so large and, since academic decisions are at the heart of every case, outside professors wouldn't be willing to interfere, (3) if anything happened at all it would only be their lives becoming worse, possibly much worse, and (4) eventually, if enough complaints were filed against a professor, maybe, just maybe a charge would be filed that would be seriously investigated--but that nobody should hold their breath.

There are lots of bastards (and bitches) among faculty members. Wise students learn to ID them (I failed at that, and chose a coterie of bastards as my professors, and then one of the chief bastards as my advisor). Wise students learn to avoid crap as it falls from the sky, or at least duck down and minimize their exposure. The crap is almost certainly going to fall, and you sometimes have some say as to frequency, texture, and odor. Not aways. Wise students are grateful for what good they get and what bad they don't get. They don't make matters worse.

The guy in the OP made matters worse. Instead of trodding on faculty toes by accident, or failing to inform them so that they had incorrect information, or being really diligent in making sure that they were on track, he pokes them in the eye with a pike and seems to think that's his right. Sorry, that's not how the power relationships in academia work, pretty much regardless of the political leanings of the faculty. It's like when Jefferson (D) of Louisiana had his office raided--the repubs came running to his defense, not because they like him, but because they're jealous of their perks' being infringed. Pretty much all faculty, RW or LW, react the same.