National Attention to UCLA Whistleblowing Scandal from Cato's Ilya Shapiro

Over at the Cato @ Liberty blog, Ilya Shapiro has brought even more attention to the whistleblowing scandal at UCLA, which FIRE has been covering here. Shapiro, who is a Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies for the Cato Institute and also the Editor-in-Chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review, writes:

This month, UCLA's James Enstrom (34 years a professor) is fighting his dismissal from UCLA for [among other exercises of his academic freedom and basic rights] submitting a paper to a regulatory board that denied that diesel particulates cause 2,000 premature deaths in California per year.  The scientific literature published subsequent to his initial findings support his thesis and the conclusions his work refuted turned out to be written by a fraud who received his Ph.D. from a diploma mill.  In short, he was fired for telling the truth.

Reason.tv produced an excellent (and infuriating) video detailing the story.   The story exposes a corrupt political process, bogus credentials, cronyism, and trumped-up charges against a man guilty only of scientific rigor:

View video

If you've missed this important case, please take a few minutes to watch the video (now with more than 30,000 views) and see how UCLA is willing to treat professors who rock the boat like Dr. Enstrom did. Thanks to Ilya Shapiro for alerting Cato readers to the situation.