Jeff Sadow has a pretty good summary of what’s going on at LSU Law School, where there’s a big tempest brewing over the suspension of one of the school’s most outspoken leftist professors. Ken Levy ran off at the mouth in a profanity-laced political tirade that was recorded by one of his students a couple of weeks ago, and the recording got out into the public.
He was dropping F-bombs on Jeff Landry and Donald Trump in the tirade, and that’s irritating enough – though that alone isn’t worthy of a suspension.
But what is worthy of a suspension is Levy’s demand that his students listen to his caterwauling. He spent most of, if not all of, a class session screeching about politics and apparently threatened to put anyone recording him in prison.
Which is not a thing. No, he can’t put his students in jail for recording him. This is a one-party state where recording laws are concerned, so a classroom whereby students are participating in a Socratic discussion would be a situation in which everybody in the room is a participant and therefore anybody could record it.
Of course, that’s something which could be fought over. We’ll get to it down the page.
We’re told that Levy customarily regales his students with a presentation on the preferential properties of veganism once a semester. Whether his political stylings were a bonus for this semester’s students we can’t say.
We’ve also been told that Ken Levy’s criminal law class seldom makes it through the textbook material. He’s popular with his students, as best we can tell, but not the most organized or disciplined instructor on that campus.
And Levy is now suing to void his suspension. Because of course he is.
The state’s top lawyer Thursday said that a tenured law professor removed due to political comments he made during class from his position does not have “carte blanche to say whatever they wish, whenever they wish.” LSU professor Ken Levy was teaching a class on Jan. 14 about police and public interactions when, according to a lawsuit he filed, he said “F**k the governor” and “f**k that” while criticizing Governor Jeff Landry for publicly rebuking a law school colleague. Attorney General Liz Murrill, citing the Supreme Court’s ruling in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, said that while freedom of speech is a cornerstone of democracy, Levy and other public school employees’ rights are not “so boundless that they may deliver any message to anyone anytime they wish.” “The Free Speech Clause generally will not shield the individual from an employer’s control and discipline because that kind of speech is—for constitutional purposes at least—the government’s own speech,” Murrill continued citing the Kennedy decision. Levy’s lawsuit asked the court to immediately allow Levy to return to his position and to block LSU from interfering with his employment. The lawsuit says that Levy was relieved of his teaching position a few days after his comments were made on Jan. 16. The suit also alleges a student complained to the governor and calls were made to LSU administration. Levy and the school’s dean met and concluded the meeting with an agreement that the professor could continue to speak his mind about controversial issues.
And of course, yesterday Don Johnson, quite possibly the worst judge on the 19th Judicial District Court, ordered that Levy be unsuspended.
Meanwhile, we’re hearing a whole lot of buzz that LSU’s leadership is about to be gutted and replaced by the Board of Supervisors. It’s part and parcel of the fact that this is a red state and its flagship university is a woke indoctrination factory, and that’s a situation which can’t ultimately survive.
Is Levy being targeted for political reasons, though?
What we’d say is that he comes off as horribly unprofessional and for a law professor to threaten to turn his students into criminals for recording his lectures is so stupid and abusive as to call into question whether he knows any law at all.
So if the brass at LSU’s law school decided to get rid of him, there are lots of non-political reasons why they might want to.
But here’s what we’d suggest.
We’d suggest that Louisiana get rid of tenure for professors at state universities. Replace it with multi-year contracts similar to the ones the schools negotiate with their coaches, so there is still something of a higher level of employee protection in place.
That’s a good idea for the state legislature to explore.
Another good idea would be to create a specific protection in state law for students in state institutions of higher education to record all classroom instruction. Recording is better than taking notes, as everyone knows, and so this is a measure that promotes learning.
It also promotes accountability. Which is something Ken Levy was specifically demanding he not be subjected to when he threatened any of his students who would record his tirade.
LSU’s law school needs better professors than this. Whether lousy local judges attempt to stop the university from making such improvements or not, we’re OK with suspending or firing him. And it’s not because he’s got a bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. It’s that he’s unstable, sloppy, and abusive toward his students. The recording of that tirade makes that pretty clear.