Brown U Upset After Student Emails Thousands of Administrators: “What did you do this week?”
Alex Shieh asks question à la DOGE about administrative bloat, Brown reacts: “we’ve advised staff not to respond”
After 11 years of dormancy, The Brown Spectator—Brown University’s bastion of ‘libertarian and conservative thought’—is back with a vengeance. Leading the charge is Alex Shieh, a sophomore majoring in computer science and economics, who’s wielding data, determination, and a sharp pen to expose why a University that costs $93,064 a year — has a $46 million structural deficit. The Spectators first project, Bloat@Brown, which aims to address administrative bloat, unchecked DEI agendas, and a troubling undercurrent of antisemitism.
Bloat@Brown: A Crusade Against Waste
Shieh didn’t set out to make friends. Last week, he fired off an email to thousands of Brown employees, asking a simple question: “What did you do this week?” It wasn’t meant to be a provocation—but it was the opening shot of Bloat@Brown, the database he and his team are building to scrutinize the necessity and legality of every administrative job at Brown. According to their website, using questions and AI, the team will assess roles for redundancy, automation potential, and ties to DEI initiatives, shining a light on what they call “legality, redundancy, and bullshit.”
Theme of the day pic.twitter.com/2ioG0StAxL
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 26, 2025
Brown currently boasts 3,805 non-instructional full-time staff members on payroll — a staggering number considering Brown currently has 7,229 undergraduate students. Inspired (but not directly, he insists) by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the project aims to peel back the layers of federal funding and bureaucratic fat strangling Brown’s budget – and mission.
The project sparked—predictably—an immediate attempt to silence him. His work matters and Brown’s reaction reveals more than it hides.
Brown employs hundreds of administrators—many in overlapping roles or vague “equity” positions—while tuition climbs (5% each year) and academic priorities scatter. Shiehs’ database hopes to determine whether these jobs are necessary or just performative. Brown’s administration isn’t laughing—they’re scrambling. The response? A hacked website, furious pushback from staff, and a meeting with an associate dean.
Why does a Year at Brown Costs $93,064?
At the heart of Shieh’s critique: Why does Brown have a $46 million structural deficit? In an open letter on his website he writes, “Receiving an Ivy League education is said to unlock upward mobility, but with a five percent tuition hike set to take effect at Brown University this July, the American Dream will soon set Brown students back a whopping $93,064 per year — 143% of what the average American can expect to earn in the same timeframe.” He continues, “According to U.S. News & World Report, Brown already holds the dubious distinction of second-most expensive university in America, with tuition rates just $335 shy of the first-place University of Southern California. $93,064 tuition, 3,805 administrators on payroll with a $46 million structural budget deficit – Illegal DEI programs are jeopardizing federal funding.”
Once a noble idea, DEI has morphed into an empire of coordinators, directors, and task forces, gobbling up resources while enforcing ideological conformity among students on campus. According to the website, AI will help flesh our roles identified as “bloat,” arguing the university is often duplicating administrative roles or pushing duplicate agendas over academics campus wide.
But it’s not just about the money. DEI’s dominance has chilled free speech at Brown. Free speech is an issue that the University’s students have been battling with for years. In a 2019, Brown Daily Herald Op-Ed, Anju Krishnamurthy (19’) wrote, “Bring Back The Brown Spectator.” “I believe that my experience of Brown and my understanding of American politics could be enriched by the presence of clear-eyed conservative commentary — published on a platform devoted to conservative voices on campus, versus piecemeal contributions to existing student-run publications — from my peers. I want Brown students who lean right to have the opportunity to express their opinions openly, experience the process of putting together a publication and participate in student discourse.” As it stands today, students and faculty self-censor, fearing accusations of insensitivity—or worse.
Antisemitism: The Silent Scandal
Diving into his website you see there is a deeper thread Bloat@Brown is tugging at: antisemitism on campus. Brown’s not immune to the wave of anti-Israel sentiment sweeping universities since October 2023. Shieh has explicitly tied Bloat@Brown to this issue. The Methodology page of his website explains that they use an AI algorithm to analyze every Brown administrator. The algorithm uses scoring metrics to assign ratings to each employee via the categories: Legality, Redundancy, and Bullshit Subscores. Legality Subscores center on DEI and Antisemitism. Questions asked are: “Does the role involve diversity, equity, and inclusion, which may violate the Civil Rights Act following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard?” and, “Has the employee publicly voiced antisemitic ideas, which the Trump Administration asserts is a violation of the Civil Rights Act?” Redundancy Subscores center on Automation and Overlap. Can the role be automated using current technology? Is the employee assigned to responsibilities that could otherwise be completed by other employees with overlapping responsibilities? And lastly, based on the 2018 book by David Graeber, “Bullshit Jobs: A Theory”, Shieh gives us the Bullshit Job Subscores. Flunkie, Goon, Duct Taper, Box Ticker, and Taskmaster. You can find definitions and more details on rankings in the Scoring Metrics section of the new site.
Shiehs willingness to poke this bear will make him a lightning rod. His revival of The Brown Spectator—a platform historically unafraid to challenge progressive orthodoxies—hints at broader concerns. When Jewish students raise alarms, administrators make vague promises of “dialogue” and Shiehs critique of administrative bloat – doubles as a jab at inaction.
Retaliation?
Brown didn’t take long to react. After Bloat@Brown went live, the site was hacked and as of this printing was still down. The team claims the cyberattack, that has temporarily disabled their database, came from within the Brown network (from a Brown IP address).
According to a March 24th Chronicle article, a Brown spokesperson relayed, “we’ve advised staff not to respond (to Shiehs inquiry).” The university also hauled Shieh in for a chat with an associate dean, a move dripping with irony: a school that prides itself on “open inquiry” trying to intimidate a student asking questions – and in a state like Rhode Island, with strong student journalist protections deeply embedded into law – do not expect Shieh to back down.
2/ Two days later, Alex received a letter alleging he’d “emotionally harmed” several employees, “misrepresented” himself as a reporter, and violated operational procedures. Brown demanded he “return any confidential information” he had obtained or face discipline.
— FIRE (@TheFIREorg) March 27, 2025
The Brown Spectator is back—and it’s watching
A graduate of one of the country’s most prestigious private high schools, Phillips Andover Academy, and now a sophomore at Brown, Shieh is blending his new age, tech savvy education with old-school journalistic grit. His work’s messy, unpolished, and —exactly what a student paper should be. His message to staff and administration, “Our goal is to be fair,” Shieh says. “Help us understand your job by emailing alex@brownspectator.com from your Brown email address.”
The Brown Spectator’s rebirth isn’t just about Shieh or The Bloat@Brown Project. It is about bringing diversity of free thought, transparency and accountability back to the university that built its reputation on those very things – it is just the wake-up call Brown University needs.
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Comments
There is no place for ivy to grow in the wheels of industry.
Shut off the boilers and let the soft science crowd blow themselves to bits because they have no clue on recovering from a low water condition or a flameout.
Let me share this as long as this story channels Musk and DOGE. Did you see this? Brett’s interview with Musk and several members of the DOGE team is compelling. How do Democrats explain that over 15 million people receiving Social Security are over the age of 120?
This interview with Elon Musk and the Dodge team is incredible, as it counters nearly all the adverse claims made by Democrats and their harmful talking points.
They are ordinary, everyday citizens with well-above-average intellects who share stories about the shocking inefficiency and waste of US taxpayer money. They are moving at breakneck speed to save the country from collapse.
Democrats like Elizabeth Warren and the activist judges in the Federal DC District Court are out of touch with reality, and Americans should now view them as insane due to their extreme rhetoric.
https://youtu.be/l7kQNwJ4H_w?si=HD9VmGLrCH7Js9gS
“How do Democrats explain that over 15 million people receiving Social Security are over the age of 120?”
I’ve seen a lot of mention carefully saying that these people are IN the SSI database, but I haven’t seen any direct claims that they are actually receiving Social Security checks.
I can see other reasons why such names would be in the database, for example:
“Do not honor” records for flagged identities popularly used by fraudsters.
Records of valid Social Security members whose disabled a descendants are through some program still eligible for survivors benefits from a parental account.
I think about such things because I was involved in Y2K amelioration efforts. The insurance industry was the first victim of Y2K bugs, well before Y2K, because their policies and databases routinely contains dates well into the next century, for reasons that are obvious once you start to think about it. In fact the insurance industry was the canary that made the information technology industry aware that there was a significant problem about to blow up with 21st century dates. And the Social Security program is, of course, an insurance program, so it triggers my Spidey sense.
If that is truly the situation with all the 100+ year old SS recipients, it would be an open-and-shut case to produce the corrobative evidence and put the issue to rest.
All the foot dragging and whining suggests rather that it is most likely a vehicle for fraud and/or money laundering.
There are only 5.8 million, total, receiving survivor benefits. One would assume a majority of those are spousal, so would not be 115 year old plus. This category cannot even begin to account for that number.
Bet they would have responded if it had been an anti-Trumper/Musker asking.
Absolutely correct. This polite idiot went about this entirely the wrong way. Instead, his campaign should’ve been involved massive assemblages of stupid people, leavened with judicious amounts of flaming gasoline. Then, the administration would all have met before him one after the other, and proferred their weekly progress reports to their new god along with flowers and candy.
Sweet. I’m just stunned that a university that runs over $93,000 yr is in the hole and has an administrative staff over half as large as the student body. What are all those people doing? Sounds like our public school systems. The more money they get, the more administration grows while the number of students stagnates or declines.
You can’t give that money to teachers. They couldn’t keep complaining about their pay if you did that.
Because tuition increases support the bloat, it’s no different than carbohydrates and high FODMAP foods that cause IBS and SIBO in people.
You sweet summer child: it is the rule, not the exception, that schools (particularly institutions of higher learning) are top heavy with admin, not faculty. Whether you consider actual bodies employed or look at the budget, the portion relating to administrative staff is greater than the faculty portion. There’s a tremendous amount of deadwood in admin, and it’s not just in all the paperwork they constantly push on everyone.
You’d be excused for thinking that the mission of these institutions is teaching and developing minds, but that’s the propaganda that they’ve been selling for years.
“Once a noble idea, DEI has morphed into an empire of coordinators, directors, and task forces, gobbling up resources while enforcing ideological conformity among students on campus.” I must have missed that–when exactly was racial discrimination a “noble idea”?
Easy peasy answer.
When RD favors you (or a group that you like), it’s a noble idea. When it favors the other guy, it’s a bad thing.
This is only Ms. Stone’s 5th article here, so perhaps she is a young, slightly indoctrinated, yute.
It seems so. Lots of people who think they’re conservative are really stewed in the juices of Progressivism and don’t realize it.
An unavoidable mistake to many who have been told since birth that anyone not to the left of Castro is a far right conservative.
I think it’s safe to say that the concepts of diversity and inclusion are noble when unsullied by political manipulation. There’s nothing wrong with them in a vacuum. You do have more of a point on the equity concept unless equity is meant to explain an eventual normalization to the mean achieved through hard work and patience.
The problem with all of these concepts is that they have come to be associated with a predicated unspoken term of “forced” in front of them because they have been used for nefarious posturing and power grabbing.
The “noble idea” was the veneer put on DEI by its promoters. It has long-since worn off, revealing the cheap particle board that was always at its core.
Like BLM before it, DEI is a scam that follows the advice of the Left’s hero, Barack H Obama, to redistribute the wealth. Grifters gonna’ grift all day long. It’s what they do.
When it involved fences, boxes, baseball games, and small black children looking to evade the requirement to purchase a ticket, which was the whole purpose of the fence to begin with.
Nothing the wokiesta leftists hate more than the possibility of accountability and consequences. There’s no way that Brown can justify over 3,800 non instructional positions. Instead of.taking the opportunity to look inward and determine how much overlap, bloat, redundancy is present or whether the activities all these employees are supposed to be doing are essential to the Univ mission they pitch a fit. The neo clerisy of our public and private over credentialed administrative class seem to believe whatever they do is automatically good, necessary and proper while anyone questioning them is a heretic who must be driven out of the ‘temple’.
If they looked inward, their analysis would be something like, “The grift is still working. It’s a great thing that I don’t need to produce real work because I don’t know how. Anyway, I deserve to be paid just for being who I am! Now, how can we crush this little puissant who is threatening my wonderfulness?”
DEI was never noble. It was always intended as a tool to discriminate against the out group.
Hi guys! Thanks for the feedback:) I got started on my journey fighting the schools/unions for help with my dyslexic children – and their inclusion. I used the word equity a lot back then – when it was NOT a buzz word for woke. 2020 is when all the insanity started. It was my experience that DEI (in school) was originally for children with disabilities. Either way, feedback is alway appreciated! Thank you.
Keep up the good work!
“Equity” has always been a Progressive term to replace “equality.”
Never has “equity” been a noble goal. It has always existed as cutting others down so there is no exceptionalism. See Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘Harrison Bergeron’ from 1961.
2020 is not when the insanity started. Not by a long stretch. Progressivism has been working on this for a long time.
Step back and take a look at your education, and that you seem to have been led to believe that history started in this century.
In point of fact, before the word equity was hijacked and abused by the progressive left, it was a noble legal concept, representing both the impartial treatment of all sides by the judicial system, in addition to the concept of the victim of a crime being made whole as far as possible by the offending party.
Equity emerged from a parallel system to the King’s courts of law. Originally the province of the Church, it evolved to a chancery system in which the Chancellor could ameliorate harsh results of the law courts. Because of its Church origins, equity also administered certain fields such as domestic relations to the exclusion of law courts. The maxims of equity, such as the doctrine of unclean hands, ensured that no party would be rewarded for unjust behavior. It ensured that the scales of Justice remained balanced, the opposite of DEI’s presumption that certain parties are entitled to rewards.
I have news for you. “Equity” and DEI principles were a “thing” in the US military back in the mid-1970s. They just didn’t call it that. If it was in the military, it was already in the rest of the federal government. The insanity has been around for decades.
“Brown demanded he “return any confidential information” he had obtained or face discipline.”
*****
A year ago, that attitude potentially could be a serious threat to his future. Now, an administrative response like that just paints a target on Brown Univ. Federal funding.. The smug, credentialed “Elites” really aren’t very bright.
And will the employees who transmitted this “confidential” information to a clearly unauthorized party be subject to any discipline whatsoever?
Our universities have become hiring halls for useless academics.
If only it were “useless academics,” that could be easily ignored without repercussion. It’s the useless administrative goons where the real problem lies, for they are busybodies who insist on foisting their nonsense on everyone everywhere they go.
Four years ago Vanderbilt had 2.3 employees to every student in their graduate studies program. Their goal was to get it down to 1:1 in 5 years. I don’t think they have got it to two to one yet.
I can answer the student’s question. Administrators like most managers spend their time going to meetings, At those meetings they make plans for more meetings. When not at meetings they review status of the low level employees who do the actual work, That is if they are a first line manager. Otherwise they drink coffee, practice their putting, and dream about get promoting to the next admin level.
You got ’em pegged.
“Questions asked include… “Has the employee publicly voiced antisemitic ideas, which the Trump Administration asserts is a violation of the Civil Rights Act?”
Two disturbing things here. voicing ideas is an intrinsic right, no matter who else thinks these opinions are distasteful or harmful.
And I am quite sure that only anti-Semitic ACTIONS can be a violation of civil rights; if the Trump administration thinks otherwise they are in the wrong (I don’t think they have asserted this position, however).
Intellectual and moral honesty make it clear that one cannot deride DEI and racial favoritism on one hand while simultaneously insisting that anti-Semitism be uniquely positioned as punishable Wrong Thought.
I dislike this tendency, exemplified by so-called “hate crimes”, of assuming the underlying thoughts and beliefs go to increasing or reducing the criminality of a person’s actions. This leads to Summer of. Floyd rioters being lionized while people who pray near abortion clinic become felons
This is fantastic! Love this young man’s chutzpah.
Grown in administrative staff seems endemic to institutions like government and universities. C. Northcote Parkinson explains why in his famous book. At the beginning on page 5 Parkinson gives us some numbers.
“But the staff of the Colonial Office affords a better field of study during a period of imperial decline. Admiralty statistics are complicated by factors (like the Fleet Air Arm) that make comparison difficult as between one year and the next. The Colonial Office growth is more significant in that it is more
purely administrative. Here the relevant statistics are as follows:
1935 1939 1943 1947 1954
37 450 817 1139 1661”
Thus as Britain lost its colonies the staff of the Colonial Office continued to grow. Eventually universities will do away with students altogether, and have only administrative staff which will continue to grow, and somehow American taxpayers will fund all this, Unless we put a stop to all this.
As far s I know, the Trump/Musk DOGE is the first time a social democracy has tried a massive across the board reduction in staff. As one might expect the Empire Strikes Back.
It is called a NGO Think tank. Mitre and Rand have been front on center on non-student acad.
its hard for them to answer when it would lead to prosecution
“Alice laughed “There’s no use trying” she said’ “one can’t believe impossible things”
“I daresay you haven’t much practice” said the Queen “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast”
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