House committee demands Brown University hand over memos on student behind DOGE-style email

Fox News

26-06-2025

EXCLUSIVE - The House Judiciary Committee is asking the president of Brown University to hand over all internal memos related to a student who sent a DOGE-style email who subsequently faced disciplinary hearings and had his private information leaked.
"We are concerned that Brown's decision to file disciplinary charges against Mr. Shieh and hold a misconduct hearing may serve to suppress free speech and discourage others from coming forward and asking questions related to Brown's rising costs," the Thursday letter from the House Judiciary Committee to Brown University President Christina Paxson said.
Alex Shieh, a rising junior who was cleared of wrongdoing by the university on May 14, had previously angered school officials by sending a DOGE-like email to non-faculty employees identifying himself as a journalist for The Brown Spectator and asking them what they do all day to try to determine why the school's tuition has gotten so expensive.
The letter, signed by House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Wisc., chairman of the Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust and Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, seeks to understand Brown's "rationale for attempting to silence a student raising questions about how student and taxpayer dollars are being used."
The Brown Spectator, which has a board of three people, including Shieh, was revived this year after it ceased publication in 2014.
The board members faced a disciplinary hearing on May 7 over allegations that they violated Brown University's name, licensing and trademark policies.
Shieh previously told Fox News Digital that other campus publications also use the school's name, including "The Brown Daily Herald," another student-run nonprofit newspaper.
Shieh and the Spectator faced scrutiny from the university after Shieh, during free weekends in March, began investigating positions he deemed redundant after reviewing 3,805 non-faculty employees who worked at Brown and emailing them to ask, "What do you do all day?"
Shieh used AI to try to determine what Brown employees did and why the school, which costs nearly $96,000 a year, was so expensive.
When creating his database, he formatted it to identify three particular jobs: "DEI jobs, redundant jobs, and bulls--t jobs."
He said that he wanted to investigate DEI because of President Donald Trump's executive orders addressing DEI policies, and his administration threatening to withhold federal funds to universities who employ them. The goal was to get as much data as possible to improve his research.
Only 20 of the 3,805 people emailed responded, with many of the responses being profane and hostile, and Shieh's Social Security number was subsequently leaked.
On June 4, Shieh testified before the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust for a hearing entitled, "The Elite Universities Cartel: A History of Anticompetitive Collusion Inflating the Cost of Higher Education."
The House Judiciary Committee is asking that Paxson, Brown's president, provide all documents and communications between Brown's employees pertaining to Shieh's "investigative inquiry, Brown University's subsequent investigation of Mr. Shieh, Brown University's decision to file disciplinary charges against Mr. Shieh, or Brown University's adjudication of Mr. Shieh's charges."
The committee is also asking for all information related to what they call the "unauthorized disclosure of Mr. Shieh's personally identifiable information."
"Brown University's decision to file disciplinary charges against students like Alex Shieh, simply for looking into the school's bloated bureaucracy and rising tuition costs, is a clear act of retaliation," Fitzgerald, who signed the letter, told Fox News Digital in a statement. "The Committee shares serious concerns about this troubling response and remains committed to conducting rigorous oversight into whether Brown University and other Ivy League institutions are engaging in anticompetitive pricing practices."
In a statement, Brian Clark, vice president for News and Strategic Campus Communications told Fox News Digital that the university "has been cooperating with extensive requests for information from the U.S. House and Senate Committees on the Judiciary since the initial inquiry arrived in April, demonstrating that we have and continue to make decisions on tuition and financial aid independently as part of our commitment to making sure that no student's family socioeconomic circumstances prevent them from accessing the benefits of a Brown education."
Clark added, "We'll continue to provide any responses to follow-up requests directly to the committees."