The New York Times reports today that UCLAProfs.com has abandoned its plan [blogged here and here] to pay UCLA students to tape-record the lectures of left-leaning professors:
A 24-year-old conservative alumnus who announced earlier this month that he planned to pay students at the University of California, Los Angeles, to tape-record the lectures of left-leaning professors backed down after U.C.L.A. officials informed him on Monday that he would be violating school policy.The alumnus, Andrew Jones, said he abandoned the plan to save his student supporters from possible legal action by the university, even though he believed they would be engaged in a "newsgathering" effort protected by the First Amendment. Mr. Jones says he is confident that students will volunteer to tape lectures or take detailed notes in an effort to expose their professors as liberal partisans who do not tolerate dissent in their classrooms. But a U.C.L.A. official said Monday that even without the monetary incentive, students who passed tapes of lectures to Mr. Jones would be in danger of sanctions by the university and possibly the professors who were recorded without permission.
Update: For further discussion, see:
