The University has launched a preliminary review of Alex Shieh ’27 for student conduct violations following his publication of Bloat@Brown. The online database, which aimed to evaluate the necessity of administrators’ jobs, “appeared to improperly use data accessed through a University technology platform,” wrote University Spokesperson Brian Clark in an email to The Herald.
Bloat@Brown is modeled after the Trump administration’s Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency and purports to highlight administrative waste within the University.
On March 18, Shieh sent emails to approximately 3,800 Brown staff members asking them to “describe what tasks you performed in the past week,” mirroring a similar February email DOGE sent to federal employees. Before Shieh decided to take the site down due to repeated hacks, the AI-powered database featured a search function that returned ratings of “every Brown administrator in three domains: legality, redundancy and bullshit jobs,” according to the website.
Shieh has also drawn the attention of prominent conservative figures, with Musk tweeting “Wow” in response to an article about his work. Conservative activist Bill Ackman described the effort as “impressive,” lauding its “remarkable” parallels to the Musk-led DOGE.
On Wednesday, Shieh took to X to directly address President Trump, Musk and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “Brown receives $254 million in federal funding. Time to step in. Students deserve transparency and free speech,” he wrote.
The Trump administration is planning to pause $510 million of Brown’s federal funding, a White House official told The Herald. The exact reason for the freeze remains unclear.
Shieh was notified of the investigation through a March 20 letter from Associate Director of Student Conduct and Community Standards Kirsten Wolfe. Wolfe wrote that Shieh’s actions may have constituted violations to the “Emotional/Psychological Harm,” “Invasion of Privacy,” “Misrepresentation” and “Violation of Operational Rules” clauses under the Code of Student Conduct.
The letter also requested that Shieh “submit a list of all other people present for or involved in the behavior under review” and send in a written statement about the incident, which could be used to determine “whether or not there is a reasonable basis to file student conduct charges.”
Shieh does not plan to cooperate with the University’s requests, he said in an interview with The Herald conducted before the White House confirmed the impending funding freeze.
“I believe that (the University needs) to bring this evidence before me first, and that’s just due process,” he added.
Shieh cited Brown’s structural budget deficit and comparatively high tuition among the motivations for Bloat@Brown. “I’m trying to help the administration to find people that might be redundant,” Shieh said.
In his analysis, he also scrutinized diversity, equity and inclusion roles at the University in light of recent federal crackdowns on DEI.
“Brown still has all these DEI people,” Shieh said. “I think that’s concerning, because Brown could have its federal funding revoked, and that would only make the deficit a lot higher, and tuition would go up a lot.”
The University “advised employees, many of whom expressed concerns, not to respond, and evaluated the situation from a policy standpoint,” Clark wrote.
Shieh said that he ended up receiving “about 20” responses from Brown staff, one of whom told him to “Fuck off.”
After receiving the letter from Wolfe, Shieh reached out to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. He got in contact with Dominic Coletti, a student press program officer who is now advocating on his behalf. Coletti echoed Shieh’s concerns about due process and emphasized that the investigation may be “violating Brown’s free speech promises.”
Clark reiterated that although “this situation has been reported as a free speech issue, it absolutely is not.” The University’s investigation focuses on how Shieh allegedly targeted individual employees with “derogatory descriptions” of their job functions, as well as Bloat@Brown’s potential use of “information and data that could only be obtained from non-public sources and systems,” Clark wrote.
Shieh maintains that all the information he used was publicly available. “People's jobs and titles are not confidential,” Shieh said.
Although FIRE has not been in direct communication with the University, it plans to publish an open letter to President Paxson in the coming days “outlining legally why what Brown is doing is suspect,” Coletti said, hoping the University would “announce that they are no longer pursuing an investigation into charges that stem purely from protected expression.”
In his emails, Shieh reached out claiming to be a reporter for the Brown Spectator, Brown’s currently inactive conservative journal. Shieh said that a masthead of current undergraduates is “bringing (the Spectator) back” and that Bloat@Brown is its first project.
Clark emphasized that Shieh’s alleged “misrepresentation” centers on potential misunderstandings arising from Shieh’s email since the Spectator “has had no active status at Brown for more than a decade, and no news article resulted.”
The University declined to provide additional details about the investigation due to federal law protecting student privacy.
The investigation comes as Bloat@Brown has drawn significant student backlash and online uproar. Hours after the website launched, multiple hacking attempts overwrote the database with negative messages before one wiped it entirely, according to Shieh.
People started “signing me up for all these stupid email newsletters,” Shieh said. A parody website, DeBloat@Brown, purports to help students “find out why my stomach feels like a balloon at Brown.”
To Shieh, the University’s inquiry “feels vaguely retaliatory, that when you investigate the administration, the administration investigates you back,” he said.
“We are treating this matter with the utmost seriousness,” Clark wrote.
Elena Jiang is a University News Editor from Shanghai, China concentrating in English Nonfiction and International & Public Affairs.
