I hate cruelty. I’ve hated it all my life. Still, I’m fascinated by it. I have always wondered how any person could deliberately harm another human being or animal and not feel terrible about it.
As many readers know, over nine weeks ago, I was suspended without notice or a hearing from teaching at LSU Law School because an anonymous student alleged that I had made “inappropriate” remarks in my very first Administration of Criminal Justice class ever on Jan. 14.
Specifically, I referenced Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry in the context of explaining why I inserted a rule in the syllabus that students may not record or distribute recordings of my class. Ironic, right? And I referenced President Donald Trump in the context of giving an overview of the course and the casebook.
In both cases, I used profanity. There is no rule at LSU against using profanity or making relevant political comments. And if the two separately are permissible, then the two together are equally permissible.
On Jan. 28, I filed a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against LSU in state court in Baton Rouge. On Jan. 30, Judge Don Johnson granted my TRO, but the First Circuit Court of Appeal stayed it on the grounds that LSU could not be ordered to reinstate me until after an evidentiary hearing.
We had the evidentiary hearing on Feb. 10-11, and Judge Tarvald Smith granted my injunction. But once again, the First Circuit first stayed the ruling and then ruled on Feb. 20 that, even with an evidentiary hearing, the courts cannot order LSU to reinstate me.
In order to arrive at this conclusion, they had to invent a brand-new rule: There is just no such thing as a mandatory preliminary injunction. On March 5, I appealed this baseless decision to the Louisiana Supreme Court. That very same day, LSU filed a “reconventional demand,” which is a fancy term for trying to make me pay their attorney’s fees.
Just think about that: LSU not only suspended me without notice or a hearing for mere words; they now want me to pay them for having the nerve to ask the courts to repair this injury. And this is on top of the $50,000-plus I have already racked up in legal bills. Fortunately, my GoFundMe, “Leave Levy Alone,” has received this much in donations. People across the state — and country — know injustice when they see it.
LSU has also accused me publicly of “threatening” my students. In wrapping up my discussion of the no-recording-or-distribution rule, I told the students that if they did indeed distribute a recording of the class, I would personally arrest and jail them.
The audio indicates that many students laughed. Rightfully so — because the suggestion was so patently absurd. Law students, of all people, know that their professors are not authorized to unilaterally arrest or jail anybody. For LSU to take this obvious joke out of context, just one of many jokes I told in that class, and treat it as a serious threat is completely dishonest.
What I have not been able to figure out is why LSU is so hellbent on destroying me. Even if my use of profanity and criticisms of two Republican politicians had been untenable (which they weren’t), nobody got hurt. My words did not cost anybody their lives or health or jobs or money.
There is so much injustice in Louisiana alone, and yet the “wrong” that LSU is choosing to concentrate all its efforts on is … profanity-laced criticism of public officials? How do LSU leadership and LSU’s counsel in this matter, Jimmy Faircloth, continue with this vicious campaign, day after day, and not have any misgivings? Where is their conscience?
In his very popular book “The Power of Now,” Eckhart Tolle suggests that people inflict “mental, emotional and physical violence, torture, pain, and cruelty … on each other” because, rather than being “in touch with their natural state, the joy of life within,” they are “in a deeply negative state” and “feel very bad.”
I will not speculate on whether LSU leadership or Faircloth “are in a deeply negative state” or “feel very bad.” I am certainly not in a position to psychoanalyze any of them. But it is difficult for me to imagine decent, compassionate human beings knowingly and willingly engaging in this kind of relentless inhumanity.
If LSU didn’t like what I said in class, the reasonable, proportional response would have been to do what initially happened two days after the infamous class: ask me to tone down the profanity.
It was not to suspend me without notice or a hearing — a suspension that has now lasted over nine weeks. It was not to fight tooth and nail in court to continue this unconstitutional suspension. And it was not to make me pay over $50,000 in legal bills — or thousands more to LSU in attorney’s fees — simply to keep doing my job.
This first appeared in The Advocate.
