University of California at Los Angeles: Attempt to Stop Critical Website from Using Letters ‘UCLA’

Category: Free Speech
Schools: University of California, Los Angeles

  • University to student: Take down website!

    August 22, 2009

    By Bob Unruh at WorldNetDaily The University of California at Los Angeles has ordered a former student to take down a website that criticizes  the school, raising objections from a rights organization. The dispute arose when the former student, Tom Wilde, posted his criticisms at a noncommercial website located at ucla-weeding101.info, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which has taken up the case. Phil Hampton, a spokesman for the university, told WND that officials were concerned the website’s address would cause people to think the site “was a communication from UCLA.” Wilde launched the site last month to […]

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  • FIRE Celebrates Our 155th Victory for Rights on Campus

    September 9, 2009

    FIRE is proud to announce that we’ve achieved our 155th public victory for student and faculty rights on campus! FIRE’s recent dual victories at UCLA and Santa Rosa Junior College—both in cases where the school had attempted to unconstitutionally ban the use of its initials on the Internet—brought us to this stunning total. (We’re so busy we didn’t even realize when we had crossed 150!) These 155 victories have restored freedom and dignity—and, in some cases, their very futures—to students and faculty across the nation. FIRE has won at 118 separate college and university campuses (and across two entire university […]

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  • Rights in the News: Victory at UCLA Helps FIRE Blaze Trail Into New School Year

    August 21, 2009

    It’s nice every time you can take a case public on a Thursday and declare victory by lunchtime on Friday. This was FIRE’s good fortune this week after we issued a press release yesterday concerning UCLA’s threats against former graduate student Tom Wilde, who maintained a private website that was critical of what he called UCLA’s “weeding out” practices. Within hours, UCLA had dropped its threats against Wilde (though we’re still waiting on Santa Rosa Junior College to make a similar move). Eugene Volokh—a professor of law at UCLA—is among the many pleased with the news. You can read his […]

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  • Victory for Free Expression: UCLA Drops Unconstitutional Threats Against Internet Speech; Online Speech Still Threatened at Santa Rosa Junior College

    August 21, 2009

    Within hours of FIRE’s press release yesterday afternoon, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) had 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. In her August 6 letter demanding that Wilde shut down the website, UCLA Senior Campus Counsel Patricia M. Jasper threatened that the site constituted trademark infringement, and could be a criminal offense under the California Education Code. But as FIRE made clear in its letter to UCLA Chancellor Gene D. Block, “cybergriping” websites like […]

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  • Victory for Free Expression: UCLA Drops Unconstitutional Threats Against Internet Speech; Online Speech Still Threatened at Santa Rosa Junior College

    August 21, 2009

    LOS ANGELES, August 21, 2009—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. Wilde turned to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help, and yesterday, 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 […]

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  • Online Speech Threatened at UCLA and Santa Rosa Junior College

    August 20, 2009

    As our press release today notes, yet another California institution has abused the California Education Code for the purposes of shutting down a private website. This time, the culprit is the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), which has unconstitutionally ordered former student Tom Wilde to take down his private, non-commercial website or else face criminal and civil action. A former UCLA graduate student, 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. Less than a month after launching the site, on August 6, UCLA […]

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  • Online Speech Threatened at UCLA and Santa Rosa Junior College

    August 20, 2009

    LOS ANGELES, August 20, 2009—The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has unconstitutionally ordered a former student to take down a website criticizing UCLA or else face criminal and civil action. Tom Wilde’s private, non-commercial website is located at ucla-weeding101.info. After UCLA demanded he take down his site by this past Monday, Wilde, who has so far refused to comply, came to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help. “California has seen a disturbing trend of public colleges and universities attempting to censor or chill private speech online,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “California’s schools violate the […]

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