here in the UK the Education Act 1986 makes it a duty of a University to safeguard its members freedom of speech (within the law), and makes it unlawful for a University to do what Yale did here.
(note that it's the law in the UK, not some worthless university document)
(Oh I'm sorry, did I just libel Her Majesty's judicial system? How careless of me. I should watch what I write).
> (Oh I'm sorry, did I just libel Her Majesty's judicial system? How careless of me. I should watch what I write).
guess I missed the bit of the US constitution where other people's databases were considered protected speech.
Look, this is getting old. We had a massive libel reform which, while not as revolutionary as many people wanted, still made significant changes, and you are doing the thousands of people that worked hard to make that happen a giant disservice. Please read up on the status quo before making cheap jabs.
We're sidetracked, but that's pretty much the definition of libel tourism, and the UK is notorious for it:
http://www.economist.com/node/12903058
The UK routinely finds libel judgements against non-Britons, outside of Britain, having essentially no connection with the UK. It's an extremely broken system responsible for widespread legal harassment outside of Britain (examples in article).
It's not enforceable in the US obviously. There's a US law that explicitly prohibits that, provoked by a particularly egregious case.
Over 10 years ago, I ran a site which collected community anecdotes of the interview process at various universities, mostly focusing on Oxbridge colleges. The aim was to open up information that was often passed down between alumni of private schools where there was a tradition of attending those colleges -- leaving people like me, with no alumni to talk to, in the dark about what the interview process would be like.
I got several threatening letters from deans at the various colleges, and had a long process of trying to decide what to do. I didn't make any money off the site and couldn't afford legal help, so I ended up taking down a couple of the anecdotes when one college was particularly nasty, but for the most part ignored the threats. Ended up handing the site over to someone else as I was focusing on my university work and less involved in the admissions phase of things, and I'm happy to see it's still alive :)
(This section of the 1986 act, BTW, was introduced in response to anti-apartheid protesters disrupting speeches by members of the South African government, in order to require universities to stop such protests. It's not at all a pro-free-speech law.)