A rising junior at Brown University who has been sharply critical of his elite college took his case to Capitol Hill Wednesday, testifying before a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee.
Alex Shieh told lawmakers, “I’m not here to glorify the Ivy League, I’m here to warn you.”
Shieh claimed Brown and other elite universities have turned higher education into a luxury good, pricing the American dream out of reach for middle and working class students.
“At this very moment, the American people are tightening their belts, and Brown is raising tuition to beyond $90,000 a year,” he said. “And even while they charge students the price of a luxury car, Brown is on track to run a $46 million deficit this year.”
Shieh argued the skyrocketing tuition is due to what he called “an empire of administrative bloat and bureaucracy” at Brown unrelated to the school’s educational mission.
“Brown employs 3,805 full-time non-instructional staff for just 7,229 undergrads. That’s one administrator for every two students,” he said.
“This isn’t education. This is bloat, paid for on the backs of students and families who are mortgaging their futures for a shot at a better life,” he said. “Meanwhile Grace Calhoun, Brown’s athletic director, earns over one million dollars.”
Earlier this year, Shieh raised many of the same issues in a project for a new conservative student newspaper, the Brown Spectator.
Using AI to scrape contact details scrape contact details of all non-faculty staff at Brown from various publicly available databases, such as LinkedIn and set up a website called Bloat@Brown.
At 8:30 AM March 17, he sent out an email blast asking all 3,805 administrators asking them to justify their jobs.
It said: “Could you please (1) explain your role, (2) describe what tasks you performed in the past week, (3) explain how Brown students would be impacted if your position was eliminated, and (4) comment on your current rating in our database and any areas of concern raised by the algorithm?”
Brown University administrators were not amused. The university told staff members not to answer the email and eventually brought Shieh and other staff members at the Brown Spectator up on disciplinary charges.
An independent faculty adjudicator ultimately cleared Shieh of any wrongdoing.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) picked up on that in the hearing, accusing Brown of trying to intimidate Shieh from expressing an unpopular view.
“Why did they really come after you?” Jordan asked.
Shieh: “I think they were upset that we unveiled the rot that was going on.”
Jordan: “That’s certainly one reason. They were mad at you. But I think they were trying to make sure no one else would do it in the future. Do you think that was part of their thinking?”
Shieh: “I think that was part of it, but it backfired terribly.”
Jordan: “It sure did, because you’re brave enough to keep talking.”
A Brown statement attributed to the university’s spokesman Brian Clark pushed back on Shieh’s testimony.
“Despite continued public reporting framing a student conduct situation as a free speech issue, it absolutely was not,” he said. Clark maintained the university was mainly concerned about the privacy and safety of its employees.
Clark also took issue with the veracity of Shieh’s reporting.
“While the national conversation about higher education finances and costs is important, it’s regrettable that a witness in today’s hearing offered so many misrepresentations,” he said.
Clark noted that “Brown’s financial aid program is among the most robust in the nation,” as he went on to rebut specific criticisms point by point. He even made note of Brown’s efforts to reduce red meat consumption in dining halls by 25%.
“We continue to offer red meat choices along with other dining choices with a lesser environmental impact,” Clark said.
Finally Clark defended the disciplinary proceedings Brown brought against Shieh and his classmates, insisting that “Brown proceeded in complete accordance with free expression guarantees and appropriate procedural safeguards under University policies and applicable law.”
But, if the goal was to silence Shieh, it hasn’t worked.
Instead his campus activism has attracted national attention, blazing the trail for a new, conservative counterculture. This week The New York Times and USA Today both ran profiles. Shieh has also appeared so often on conservative news channels that some of his classmates have nicknamed him “the Fox News Kid.”
