Andrew Trees—the teacher fired from Riverdale's tony Horace Mann School in January and the author of Academy X, a novel satirizing life inside an elite private school very much like Horace Mann!— filed suit today in Bronx County's New York State Supreme Court. He charges the school with breach of contract and defamation. Trees has been awful quiet since his firing—now we know why!

Dr. Andrew Trees, the author of a roman a clef about posh Riverdale prep school Horace Mann, remains fired from that institution. But his friends and former colleagues have rallied together on his behalf! Over 60 academics signed a letter to the editor of the Horace Mann Record—which was then prevented from publishing the letter by head of school Tom Kelly. Even new Record editor Elyssa Spitzer (yes, that's Eliot's daughter!) could not sway the discourse in the direction of free speech. The unprinted letter is after the jump.