Flyers blast 'h8ful' UCLA admins for ousting conservative prof

Anonymous fliers recently appeared at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) accusing eight faculty and administrators of conspiring to oust a conservative professor.

Keith Fink, a media attorney and legal commentator, was a popular lecturer in UCLA’s Communications Studies department from 2008 until 2017. Fink has maintained that UCLA faculty and staff conspired to force him out of the university through a series of administrative decisions and a biased “excellence review” panel.

[RELATED: Ousted conservative prof accuses UCLA of 'bait & switch']

Fink alleges that after preventing students from enrolling his classes, department leadership cherry-picked course reviews to sully his name at a routine employment review hearing that would determine whether to promote him to “Continuing Lecturer” or dismiss him at the expiration of his contract.

Administrators also allowed individuals whom Fink had identified as harboring a personal bias against him to sit on the panel, which initially produced a split decision on Fink’s future that was resolved when an administrator cast the tie-breaking vote against him several weeks later.

Andrew Litt, Fink’s former teaching assistant and current law clerk, told Campus Reform that since his departure, Fink has been working to launch a nonprofit that will provide legal services to “any student or faculty member whose rights have been trampled by UCLA.”

Although the initiative has not yet officially launched, Litt noted that “around 100 students” have already reached out hoping to meet with Fink, get advice about their career plans, pay their respects, or request that he speak to their groups on campus.

[RELATED: UCLA students rally in defense of beleaguered conservative prof]

Now, someone has decided to directly confront the eight administrators who many believe targeted Fink for his conservative beliefs.

Mark Daniels, a fourth-year student at UCLA, told Campus Reform that “at least 200 posters” appeared around campus lecture halls and common spaces on Sunday evening, adding that he saw two male students and one female student posting the flyers.

While some imitate old-fashioned “wanted” posters and others call for official action, one outlines the alleged crimes of the “h8ful eight,” including "deprivation of due process," "false faculty reviews," "speech suppression," and more.

The posters provoked discussion in classrooms, and Daniels recalled hearing a few students calling them “hate speech.”

The students took particular offense to a poster depicting UCLA Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Jerry Kang, which refers to him as “UCLA’s Minister of Inequity, Homogeneity, and Exclusion” and accuses him of opposing “intellectual diversity” and stifling “freedom of speech.”

Daniels noted that while there were approximately 50 posters on Sunday evening in Ackerman Plaza, a prominent campus commons, they had disappeared by Tuesday morning, while other posters around campus were either torn in half or similarly removed.

[Related: Prof believes UCLA meddling with petition from supporters]

Litt conceded that the posters are “designed to provoke” and use “incendiary rhetoric,” but maintained that they generally capture the “core grievances that professor Fink and his students have about the handling of his excellence review.”

Litt said he doubts that the administration will respond, except possibly to take any remaining posters down, but did say that Fink would “absolutely” return to teach at UCLA “in a heartbeat” if given the opportunity.

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