A Web site purporting to expose “UCLA’s radical
professors” and offering students cash payouts in return for
information about their classes was thrust into the national
spotlight Wednesday after a barrage of media coverage.
The site, uclaprofs.com, was launched just last month by the
Bruin Alumni Association, a non-profit organization unrelated to
the UCLA Alumni Association. The site was started by alumnus Andrew
Jones with the goal of publicizing and reforming the
“exploding crisis of political radicalism on campus,”
according to the Bruin Alumni Association Web site.
Jones, a former Daily Bruin Viewpoint columnist and chair of
Bruin Republicans, calls “indoctrinationist professors”
the organization’s largest concern.
On the Web site is a link to the “dirty 30,” a list
of 31 professor profiles who Jones claims are among the most
radical at UCLA. He ranked each professor with a scale of
“power fists” ““ five fists being the most
radical.
The profiles on the site are written in politically charged
language, in some cases very extensive, even offering commentary on
the professor’s family and college education.
In some of the profiles, Jones questions the professor’s
research and teaching qualifications.
The site offers students as much as $100 in return for
“information about abusive, one-sided or off-topic classroom
behavior” by professors, in the form of detailed class notes
with audience reactions and lecture recordings.
However, doing so is against university policies designed to
protect professors’ copyright over their course materials,
according to Patricia Jasper, legal counsel for UCLA.
“I’m personally concerned when students may be
unwittingly encouraged to violate university policies that could
write them into student conduct code violations,” said
Jasper.
Jones said UCLA has not contacted the Bruin Alumni Association
about the matter, and that “right now, we believe what we are
doing is legal.”
The Bruin Alumni Association is not engaged in selling lecture
materials, but rather is collecting news in the public interest,
Jones said.
UCLA Academic Senate chair Adrienne Lavine said, “Faculty
are generally comfortable with what they say in the
classroom” and would not mind it being shared, but that the
Web site’s profiles of the so-called “dirty 30″
are sarcastic, snide and distasteful.
“The offer to pay students certainly feels like
spying,” Lavine said.
While she has heard concerns from a number of faculty, including
some listed on the site, neither she nor Jasper have heard of any
faculty contemplating suing Jones for libel.
Jasper did speculate that professors “could go after the
Bruin Alumni Association for copyright infringement if in fact they
are obtaining and disseminating copyrighted material.”
The Bruin Alumni Association may also be at risk for using the
name “UCLA” in Internet addresses.
“The university does not own the trademark
“˜Bruin,’ but we do own “˜UCLA’ and we do
vigilantly monitor and protect our trademark,” Jasper
said.
The university is not contemplating legal action at this time,
but “we’re keeping our options open,” she
said.
Several of the faculty members who are profiled ““ at
length and in great detail ““ on the Web site said the
situation has a number of negative implications on
professors’ academic freedom.
While Karen Brodkin, a professor of anthropology who is profiled
on the site, dismissed the Web site as “a pretty pathetic
attempt to smear people,” she also said that she is most
concerned with its role in the wider effort to censor university
faculty.
Political science Professor Mark Sawyer, who is also profiled,
shared similar sentiments, saying the Web site is an attempt to
intimidate professors and make them censor what they say and teach
in their courses. He said it comes between the teacher-student
relationship by paying students to “spy” on their
professors.
Sawyer is criticized on the site for listing “black
political thought” and “critical race theory”
among his focuses within political science.
“The site itself politicizes the classroom,” Sawyer
said. “The site itself is doing exactly what it’s
accusing the professors of doing.”
Sawyer also said the Web site takes what is said in class out of
context, and true intended meanings can not always be verified just
by recording lectures.
Many of those targeted see the Web site as less than
objective.
“There seems to be a divide between what they claim to be
doing, which is looking for academic bias, and what they are doing,
which is attacking people whose views differ from theirs,”
said Jonathan Zasloff, a law professor whose campaign contributions
are listed on the Web page.
Zasloff said while his first reaction was one of amusement, he
finds many of the site’s implications disquieting.
“They’re entitled to say anything they want about me
or anyone else on the list because that’s what it means to be
able to express their point of view. But this seems to be a little
more politically orchestrated,” Zasloff said.
He said the Bruin Alumni Association has “some pretty
heavy hitters” on its advisory board, and speculates it will
use the Web site and the media attention it has created to push an
academic bill of rights to the state legislature, which would
mandate that students be exposed to a variety of viewpoints,
including political, and that students cannot be discriminated
against for their own views.
Brodkin, who is called a “radical women’s studies
lesbian feminist” on the Web site, also said Jones has
“connections” with conservative legislators and that
the Web site may be tied into a number of right-wing bills in the
legislature promoting censorship.
Jones said the Bruin Alumni Association welcomes reports of
abusive behaviors by conservative professors and would spend extra
time looking into them, but added that such professors are unlikely
to act inappropriately.
With reports from Derek Lipkin and Charles Proctor, Bruin
senior staff.