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Court Sides with University in Thesis CaseA federal appeals court panel ruled August 12 that University of California/Santa Barbara officials acted reasonably when they barred a master’s thesis written by former graduate student Christopher T. Brown from the university library and withheld his degree for 11 months. The point in contention was a two-page “disacknowledgments” section in which Brown, using strong language, criticized the school’s dean and faculty. Speaking for the majority in the 2–1 ruling, Judge Susan Graber of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that the university had a legitimate educational objective of “teaching [Brown] the proper format for a scientific paper.” However, dissenting Judge Stephen Reinhardt maintained that “academic freedom and vigorous debate” were entitled to protection in a university setting and that Brown should have had a chance to show that officials had punished him for his critical comments. Brown’s attorney Phil Hoffman, who argued that the issue centered on whether public universities have the same control over student speech that public-school administrators have over the content of high-school newspapers, said in the August 14 San Francisco Chronicle, “If anything, the decision creates confusion.” He plans to seek a rehearing before a larger appellate panel. Posted August 19, 2002. |
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