My School Infringed My Homework

On May 13, 2010, the blog located at Redstate.com posted Elena Kagan’s senior thesis To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933 from Princeton University.

Subsequently, the blogger received a notice from Princeton University to remove the copy of the thesis from her website. See notice here. The Princeton University Archives claims that the copies provided are governed by U.S. Copyright Law, are for private individual use only and electronic distribution is prohibited.

This got me thinking…how did Princeton University Archives obtain rights to this thesis? Clearly Princeton University could not claim that they were the author, unless the student, in this case, Elena Kagan, was employed by Princeton University and the thesis was prepared in the context of her employment. (Ed. – for what students pay to attend most universities, no student produced material should ever be considered a work made for hire.) The rights of an educational institution with respect to a student - produced work is quite a quagmire and includes issues of authorship and fair use / educational purposes defenses, among others. It should not be.

The student created the work. The student should be free to do what they wish with the work and not be subjected to what the school would do with the submitted work. At least on this level I will give Princeton some credit….

This is when I found a copy of the senior thesis of Michelle Obama (then Robinson) from Princeton University on the Politico blog and figured out what Princeton University had – a limited license.