UCLA is preventing students from registering for a conservative professor’s free speech class for the spring semester, says the professor who teaches the course, The College Fix reports.
Keith Fink is charging that his department head is blocking enrollment in the his free speech on campus study because the members are politically hostile to his ideas.
But the head of the UCLA communications department says student enrollment in the class is limited to ensure “reasonable class sizes” and not based on any political assessment.
That “reasonable size” is limited to 150 students.
The students say they just want to sign-up for the professor’s “Communication Studies 167: Sex, Politics, and Race: Free Speech on Campus.”
Taryn Jacobson told The College Fix that she has repeatedly tried to register for one of Fink’s classes but is always turned away because the course is supposedly full.
“This is one of my last quarters at UCLA and this class is crucial to my preparation for law school,” Jacobson stated in an email. “It will also strongly guide my decision (either by affirming or dis-affirming) my aspirations to attend.”
Even though the class was closed to further enrollment, Jacobson went anyway with a “permission-to-enroll” (PTE) form that Fink gave her. The form was subsequently overruled by UCLA.
The Daily Bruin reports that Fink seems to be the only professor who can’t get a PTE form approved by the university.
“I am a voice of a teacher who’s not going to go away,” Fink told the UCLA college newspaper. “When I see an injustice toward students, I am going to fight.”
Fink blames Kerri Johnson, the new chair of the communication studies department, for also blocking students from enrolling in another one of his classes that focuses on free speech in the workplace.
Austin Kaidi, a former teaching assistant in Fink’s classes, told The College Fix: “For the past five years, Professor Fink has been able to educate large numbers of students without any problems. However one quarter after the Communication Studies appoints a chairwoman with incredibly left-leaning ideals, Professor Fink, the only outspoken conservative in the department, is singled out, his PTE’s are revoked, and his future classes are limited.”
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This story was revised from an earlier version that incorrectly identified the gender of Austin Kaidi as a female and indicated that he was not aware of Prof. Fink’s political opinions. The Daily Caller regrets the error.