A syllabus from a Duke University class on hedge funds stated that staffers of the student paper, The Chronicle, are not allowed to take the class.
Lecturer Linsey Lebowitz Hughes, who teaches “Inside Hedge Funds,” at Duke, put the message after a warning that students were forbidden to record guest speakers. The Chronicle found that Hughes had been putting this in her “Inside Hedge Funds” syllabus since 2014. Duke is unaware of any instances of staffers from The Chronicle explicitly being denied a spot in the class, and has told Hughes that putting this in her syllabus was “not appropriate.”
I am alarmed that Hughes thought it was reasonable to bar The Chronicle staffers from taking her class. Students should not be penalized in any way, shape, or form just by being a part of their school’s student newspaper.
Free Press Free Speech 
Yes- this is pretty appalling. A simple statement that student journalists must consider guest speakers in the class as “off the record” would certainly suffice. North Carolina does have only 1 party consent laws for recording of conversations, so it would be legal for students to record the class. Thus, I can see how it would be something that the professor might want to have as ground rules. That having been said, no one speaking at a class on hedge funds has any intention of sharing private information nor have they any illusion about confidentiality.
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