By Matthew Boedy

Most if not all Georgia institutions got a public records request last week from a shadowy media group linked to a politically conservative “government transparency” coalition. I have been able to confirm 13 schools got the request. Here is what the group requested:

 A complete list of course syllabi for all undergraduate and graduate courses offered during the most recent academic semester, which I understand to be Spring 2025. This request includes syllabi for all courses across all departments, schools, and colleges, whether offered in-person, online, or in hybrid formats.

Please include any relevant metadata, such as:

• Course title and number
• Instructor name
• Department or academic unit
• Course delivery format (online/in-person/hybrid)

That media group wrote “stories” on all the requests it made. Here is the link to the request to my school.

That media group, Metric Media, is far from a reputable news organization, according to actual media coverage of its funding. It named its partner in the request, the Coalition Opposing Governmental Secrecy, a 501c3 started in 2024, based in Missouri.

The media group has been profiled several times by Columbia Journalism Review. Here is one lede from one of its stories about the group’s funding: “four political action committees and four nonprofit organizations paid a network of partisan pay-for-play news sites controlled by Metric Media over $14 million in 2021–2022. The investigation demonstrates millions more flowing to partisan “pink slime” news sites than previously reported. The payments can be traced to organizations tied to conservative megadonors, including shipping magnate Richard Uihlein, billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel, and oil and gas billionaire Tim Dunn.”

It also appears Metric Media sent the same syllabi request on the same date as the one to Georgia schools to schools in Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and Arizona. It may be more than these states. The “news stories” on those requests are scattered on the individial “news sites” for individual communities. Metric Media has community “news” sites in 49 states. I only checked a few. Here are some links: University of Arizona, University of Albany, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, and Stockton University.

I would assume these requests went out to every state and every school so check with your FOIA manager. Obviously we can’t stop universities from following the laws of public information – nor should we try. But we should be aware of who is making these requests.

On that note, this coalition and media partner requested from the Univeristy of Connecticut “lists that show all current students who are Chinese Nationals and which department of study they are in” in 2025.

I wrote two social media threads on this: Twitter and Bluesky.

Matthew Boedy is president of the Georgia AAUP. He can be reached on X/Twitter and Bluesky.