Louisiana Voice

Guest column by Dayne Sherman

On Friday morning, 38 people assembled at Southeastern Louisiana University’s Fayard Hall to witness Dr. Fereshteh Emami’s grievance hearing. Emami, a celebrated analytical chemist and associate professor with tenure at SLU, was summarily fired from the Lake Maurepas Monitoring Project, after speaking to the media about her scientific findings. This hearing was the first leg in the process to try to win her job back.

Dr. Fereshteh Emami and her attorney, William Most, during Friday’s grievance committee hearing at Southeastern Louisiana University. In foreground, with back to camera is grievance committee member Mario Krenn, Ph.D.

The room was packed, an odd occurrence for a grievance hearing at “Sleepy Louisiana University – SLU” in my hometown and at my alma mater.

Standing at the classroom lectern, Dr. Emami gave a strong, logical, and persuasive speech as to why she believed she was fired from the project for reporting potentially hazardous pollution in Lake Maurepas, a lake my family has fished on for well over 100 years. The Air Products grant, $10 million for SLU to “greenwash” their big carbon capture CO2 sequestration project, was and is a corporate-federal boondoggle. She didn’t toe the party line. And it cost her a research position. Not her tenured faculty position yet, but her job doing research. She made it clear that she fled the repression and religious persecution in Iran and proudly became an American citizen. Only to meet rank corruption in Hammond, Louisiana, among these quasi-intellectuals.

Fereshteh Emami, Ph.D., gives her presentation to Southeastern Louisiana University grievance committee Friday. In foreground, with back to camera, is grievance committee member Monique LeBlanc, Ph.D.

Dr. Emami requested four outcomes from the hearing:

1. An outside investigator to look into her firing and the Lake Maurepas Monitoring Project scandal.

2. For SLU to follow the First Amendment and FIRE’s guidelines in SLU media policies.

3. SLU to provide her and the committee with unredacted emails that were unearthed by public records requests.

4. To receive her old position back in the monitoring project with back pay.

Two moribund professors and a staff member bloviated the SLU administrative party line in their statements. Declaring that Dr. Emami was too slow in reporting data. Baloney! Those three rascals are, in my opinion, simpletons and administration toadies. They couldn’t catch a cold with three weeks’ notice! Yet they are pretending Dr. Emami was lagging. Give me a break! They are not even worth listing their names here in this column. Their presentations were sloppy, mean-spirited, contradictory, and bullying. Unworthy of an academic career in Louisiana or elsewhere. On the contrary, the evidence of published peer reviewed journal articles by Dr. Emami’s team showed she was on time and doing well in her research.

Make no mistake: This case is about carbon capture and sequestration in Louisiana and the dangers of exercising academic freedom at Southeastern Louisiana University. It’s all about retaliation. And as I say repeatedly: follow the money.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I am a tenured professor at SLU and THE elected faculty grievance committee chair. However, I could not in good conscience serve as committee chair at this time. I voluntarily recused myself from serving on the committee due to SLU President William Wainwright’s and Library Director David Sesser’s constant attacks against me. (This column in no way represents the views of the SLU administration. I speak only for myself, a private citizen.)

Two major points in the hearing stood out:

First, the University stooges sent an internal document of “evidence” to the grievance committee and DID NOT share it with Dr. Emami and her lawyer William Most (He was forbidden to speak at the hearing even though Dr. Emami had requested it. She is on FMLA leave and wanted his help in presenting.) Moreover, Emami shared her evidentiary documents with the full committee and the SLU administrative hacks. Not giving the documents to Dr. Emami was likely a rookie mistake by the grievance committee. At the end of the day, not sharing evidence with Dr. Emami was prejudicial and unfair. In the rest of the country, it would have caused mistrial or dismissal.

The other major issue was Wainwright’s absence from the hearing. He is the SLU President and didn’t bother to show up, despite sending many of his university staff members and the UL System attorneys to the hearing. He was on Dr. Emami’s witness list. Where was he? Was Wainwright cozying up to carbon capture lobbyists? Was he sitting for another pay-to-play CEO Magazine feature article? Or was he hiding in a bathroom somewhere on campus waiting for the hearing to end?

I suspect Old Wainwright just chickened out. Afterall, this is his first time working full-time at a university in his life. He’s used to working at unaccredited vo-techs and running prison welding programs in Bumfuzzle. An undeniable truth in Louisiana: it’s rarely what you know. It’s who you know.

What happens next?

The process is simple and straightforward, but it is not unlike Louisiana politics in general, a saga full of potential collusion and corruption. In good faith, the SLU faculty grievance committee will deliberate in private and make their decision on Dr. Emami’s four requests. They can approve any one of them, none of them, or all of them. They will send their decision to Wainwright. I have no doubt Willie Wainwright will veto anything the group decides that is in Dr. Emami’s favor. He has much to lose, since he personally made the terrible decision to fire her. That is the “Dysfunction Southeastern Family Way.”

Afterward, Dr. Emami will decide if she would like to appeal Wainwright’s decision to the University of Louisiana System Board of Supervisors, a true kangaroo court of Jeff Landry sycophants with no integrity whatsoever, from my personal perspective and experience.

Indeed, I went to the Baton Rouge grievance appeal hearing on December 5, 2024, for former SLU Philosophy Professor Dr. Peter Gratton. According to Dr. Gratton’s recent lawsuit, the malevolent UL System hearing board ACCIDENTALLY placed their written decision to REJECT his termination appeal PRIOR to the meeting taking place, a violation of every legal precedent since Moses stood with the tablets of stone. Perhaps the UL System’s incompetent lawyers screwed up by letting the cat out of the bag. Or maybe it was a low-level staffer’s mistake in putting the written decision in Dr. Gratton’s eFolder by accident. Regardless, it’s going to be an interesting case to watch.

But back to Dr. Emami. After the UL System blesses the SLU corruption, as they surely will, she can then file a federal lawsuit with the courts. And may a jury of her peers decide wisely.

Dr. Fereshteh Emami stood tall at the hearing. She will stand tall against the SLU bullies in federal court as well. All of Louisiana should stand with her.

–Dayne Sherman is an author, advocate, activist, and an academic. He’s working on a memoir titled He’s a Problem: My Battle Against Book Burners, Bullies, and Bigots.

A simple question for State Rep. Michael Echols (R-Monroe): Considering Louisiana’s near-or-at-the-bottom in virtually every state ranking, from OBESITY to POVERTY to ECONOMIC CLIMATE to POLITICAL CORRUPTION to EDUCATION to CRIME to QUALITY OF LIFE, don’t you think your time and efforts would be better served addressing those issues rather than fawning over Cankle Ankles Trump by AUTHORING A BILL to name the new Mississippi River bridge after him?

Here’s the bill:

For that matter, it would seem that Echols would be too concerned about the HIGH CRIME RATE IN MONROE to fret over the naming of a bridge in Baton Rouge.

‘Groom of the Stool’ Michael Echols

Echols gushed, “President Trump has been a transformational leader for the people of Louisiana. It would be my highest honor to name a new Mississippi River bridge in Baton Rouge after the greatest President of our time.”

Transformational? No question about that. But “greatest” of our time? Hell, why doesn’t Echols just follow trump around with a roll of toilet paper to demonstrate his utter subservience like the medieval GROOM OF THE STOOL?

If Rep. Echols persists in tilting at this particular windmill, we can only assume he’s perfectly okay with:

• pedophilia,
• rape,
• enriching oneself off his position,
• enacting tax breaks for his rich pals while dumping on the middle class,
• inflicting immeasurable harm on the environment,
• attempting to annex an entire country against the will of its citizens,
• poisoning the air, water and land along the Mississippi river by industry,
• wholesale arrests of innocent children,
• killing protestors,
• initiating investigations and even indictments of those with whom he disagrees and
• inciting an insurrection of our very government.

Harsh? Of course, but given your blind allegiance to a man with 34 felony convictions, one is left with little room for latitude in judgment.

It raises this obvious question for Echols and his fellow Trump-worshiping Repugnantcans:

Remember when the REPUGNANTCAN PARTY MANTRA was to “get the government out of our lives”?

Yeah, I remember, too, even if the party of the rich and powerful has forgotten.

Take Opinion 25-0069 by the Louisiana Attorney General’s office, for example.

The opinion, requested by State Rep. Beryl Amadee (R-Houma), was authored by Assistant Attorney General Amanda LaGroue, attempts to further restrict access to objectionable material in public libraries, a thinly-disguised effort at censorship, a favorite ploy of authoritative governments throughout history.

Basically, LaGroue’s opinion pretends to safeguard the “fundamental rights of parents to direct the reading, listening and viewing choices of their minor children,” when in fact, it is intended as little more than a means to keep “objectionable” material away from everyone, no matter that some of us never asked for “protection.”

The primary reason for alarm is not that we won’t be able to read racy material with sexual content—we can get a bellyful of that off the Internet any time we wish—but that it opens the door to far more widespread censorship. It’s a slippery slope to the government’s being able to silence criticism such as already being experienced by STEPHEN COLBERT at CBS, which earlier KNUCKLED UNDER to Cankle Ankles Trump.

Louisiana Citizens Against Censorship, an all-volunteer 501(C)(4) organization, however, has been quick to challenge the legal opinion (it should be pointed out here that AG opinions are just that—opinions—and are not legally binding).

In a two-page response to the opinion, the organization said, “Louisiana Citizens Against Censorship (LA-CAC) strongly disagrees with the Attorney General’s expansive interpretation of the term “access” in La. R.S. 25:225 as including a minor’s mere ability to “physically encounter” library materials.”

• Parents have the right to guide their own children’s reading — not everyone else’s. Public libraries should empower parental choice through opt-in tools, not impose blanket restrictions that affect all families.
• Public libraries serve the entire community. They are not instruments of ideological enforcement but institutions committed to intellectual freedom and diverse viewpoints.
• Professional librarians, not political bodies, are trained to curate collections. Decisions about acquisitions should rely on established professional standards, not fluctuating political pressures or vague community standards.
• Book restriction policies disproportionately target marginalized voices. Across the country, books challenged as “sexually explicit” frequently include works by or about LGBTQ+ individuals, people of color, and survivors of abuse.
• There is a constitutional difference between obscenity and content some find uncomfortable. The Supreme Court’s obscenity standard in Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973) is narrow. Most materials targeted in library disputes do not meet this definition and are fully protected speech.
• Libraries are spaces of voluntary engagement. Simply being able to “physically encounter” a book on a shelf does not compel reading it. Families remain free to supervise, restrict, or guide their children’s selections.
• Overbroad restrictions invite litigation and waste taxpayer resources. Policies that chill access to constitutionally protected materials are likely to face costly legal challenges. The response cited three legal precedents in which the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld unfettered access to material from libraries.

“The Attorney General’s opinion effectively equates ‘access’ with passive exposure and opens the door to segregating or cordoning off lawful materials based on subjective determinations of ‘sexually explicit’ content,” LA-CAC said. “Such an approach raises serious constitutional concerns:

• It risks viewpoint discrimination, which is presumptively unconstitutional.
• It substitutes political pressure for professional library standards.
• It chills the freedom of minors—who do possess First Amendment rights—to explore ideas.
• It burdens families who do not wish to have government gatekeepers substitute their judgment for parental discretion.”

The organization further asserted:

• Parents have the right to guide their own children’s reading — not everyone else’s. Public libraries should empower parental choice through opt-in tools, not impose blanket restrictions that affect all families.
• Public libraries serve the entire community. They are not instruments of ideological enforcement but institutions committed to intellectual freedom and diverse viewpoints.
• Professional librarians, not political bodies, are trained to curate collections. Decisions about acquisitions should rely on established professional standards, not fluctuating political pressures or vague community standards.
• Book restriction policies disproportionately target marginalized voices. Across the country, books challenged as “sexually explicit” frequently include works by or about LGBTQ+ individuals, people of color, and survivors of abuse.
• There is a constitutional difference between obscenity and content some find uncomfortable.
• The Supreme Court’s obscenity standard in Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973) is narrow. Most materials targeted in library disputes do not meet this definition and are fully protected speech.
• Libraries are spaces of voluntary engagement. Simply being able to “physically encounter” a book on a shelf does not compel reading it. Families remain free to supervise, restrict, or guide their children’s selections.
• Overbroad restrictions invite litigation and waste taxpayer resources. Policies that chill access to constitutionally protected materials are likely to face costly legal challenges.

Urging lawmakers and library boards to interpret La. R.S. 25:225 “narrowly and in harmony with constitutional protections,” LA-CAC said the protection of parental rights “should not come at the expense of other parents’ rights, minor’s First Amendment freedoms, or the long-standing role of public libraries as bastions of intellectual freedom.

“Ultimately, the freedom to read is not a partisan issue—it is a fundamental constitutional right.”

Accordingly, the organization called for policies that:

• Respect constitutional limits
• Preserve professional collection standards, and
• Protect the freedom to read for all Louisiana families.

If things keep going the way they’ve been transpiring, it shouldn’t be too much longer that Gov. Squeaky Toy Landry has installed a political hack in the top spot of every college and university in Louisiana.

Last Saturday, LouisianaVoice had a story that noted Landry, through the Board of Regents, over which he has considerable sway, has ALREADY INSTALLED HIS PICKS as presidents of five state universities—McNeese State, Southeastern Louisiana University, Louisiana Tech, Northwestern State and LSU.

Now comes word that a presidential search committee will begin interviews in Baton Rouge Thursday for the post of president of the University of Louisiana Lafayette (ULL). As of the present time, 12 candidates are scheduled for interviews but the smart money says that Landry already has his mind made up and the search committee likely already has its marching orders.

Make no mistake, the Repugnantcan Party has as a top priority the complete restructuring of education in America and last time we checked Louisiana was still part of the U.S.

We got the first hint several years ago when then-State Rep. RAY GAROFALO (R-Meraux) introduced a bill in 2021 which he said would emphasize the “good” of slavery. The bill, which never made it out of committee, would have imposed a ban on “divisive concepts” and said teachers SHOULD NOT ACKNOWLEDGE institutionalized sexism or racism. That bill was so odoriferous that even Garofalo’s fellow Repugnantcan legislators were repulsed by it.

Ray Garofalo receiving the Louisiana Family Forum Outstanding Family Advocate Award

Wikipedia described Garofalo as a “non-practicing attorney.” Perhaps he needed a little practice before becoming a legislator. His effort at burnishing the story of slavery resulted in his being removed as chair of the House Education Committee.

Unfortunately, that didn’t put much of a dent in the Repugnantcans’ efforts to whitewash history, including any mentions of the genocide of Native Americans in general and the Trail of Tears in particular in favor of force-feeding “Christianity” through posting of the Ten Commandments in Louisiana and Texas classrooms and the distribution of Bibles in Oklahoma public schools.

Determined efforts continue to put a happy face on American slavery, genocide, the denial of civil and voting rights for Blacks and women.

Need further evidence? Try this on for size:

What happens when an industry awards a research grant to a university and the findings are detrimental to that industry?

When colleges face conflicting research grants, they must adhere to federal regulations and institutional policies to ensure the integrity of their research. These regulations require schools to promote objectivity by disclosure and management of financial conflicts. Each application for research funding must be certified any conflict existence as a safeguard against bias.

Yet, when Ivor van Heerden faulted the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for the levee failures during Hurricane Katrina, LSU lost no time in canning the scientist. LSU, after all was the recipient of millions of dollars in federal research grants and anything that could cast shade on the feds could conceivably cost the school, as the late columnist James Gill so succinctly point out in 2013.

Not so, said LSU emphatically. RETRIBUTION and financial considerations had nothing to do with the firing of van Heerden. But the aggrieved scientist sued the university and LSU unwisely spent $457,000 in legal fees defending the lawsuit which, after 2 ½ years, was SETTLED in van Heerden’s favor for an additional $435,000.

Remember STEVEN HATFIELD? He worked for the LSU National Center for Biomedical Research and Training in July 2002 until he was considered a “person of interest” in the mailing of anthrax-laced letters. Also fired was Hatfield’s supervisor, the head of the research center where Hatfield worked. Think financial considerations (read: federal grants) had anything to do with that decision? The upshot of that kneejerk reaction was that the Justice Department ended up settling for $2.825 million in cash and an annuity that pays Hatfield $150,000 a year for 20 years.

So now, one of the applicants for President of ULL is Ramesh Kolluru, interim president of the school following the abrupt resignation of Joseph Savoie last July. Kolluru, before his elevation to the interim president’s office, was the school’s vice president for research, innovation and economic development.

Kolluru was approached last year by an industry-friendly lobbying group called “Committee of 100 for Economic Development, Inc.,” or C100. That was following the Environmental Protection Agency’s three-day public hearing in Baton Rouge about whether Louisiana should be given enforcement responsibility of carbon capture and storage projects in the state. Carbon capture and storage, or CCS, is a method of reducing greenhouse gases by capturing carbon dioxide from the pollution of industrial smokestacks. The captured carbon is transported via pipeline and, ultimately, injected deep underground.

One of the proposed injection sites is in Lake Maurepas in Tangipahoa Parish where a professor has already been reined in for adverse findings of that proposition. The funding for that research was provided by one of the industries proposing to store the carbon

C100 desired to continue recruiting support for state control of CCS so, Michael Olivier, former head of C100 ASKED KULLURU TO HELP. “We will be seeking influential business leaders in regions of the state to sign OpEds and we will use social media to influence public opinion in the upcoming EPA ruling. Would you be that person in Acadiana? He asked, according to emails obtained through a public records request.

Kolluru’s response? “Absolutely!” So much for objectivity and non-bias in research.

Climate scientist and Penn State University professor Michael Mann called the relationship between C100 and ULL “deeply problematic,” according The Lens, a respected New Orleans online news service.

Any odds on who might ultimately be selected the new permanent ULL President?

How do you become chairman of the LSU Board of Supervisors?

The same way you get yourself named to the board in the first place.

For starters, you give money—lots of it—to the right political campaigns.

Secondly, you chum up to the governor and then you get the governor and legislator to change the rules for selection of chairman and put that power exclusively in the hands of the governor.

College degree, by the way is not a requisite, even for board membership.

And being named to the board of supervisors, along with the Superdome Commission, is one of the sweetest political plums you can pluck off the patronage tree.

Lee Mallett, a major Repugnantcan donor, both on the state and national level, was named by Gov. Squeaky Toy Landry as the new chair of the board earlier this year. The fact that he and four of his companies combined to contribute$52,500 to Landry since 2013.

Of course, this isn’t Mallett’s first rodeo; he was first appointed to the board way back in 2012 by BOBBY JINDAL, the beneficiary of $158,000 in contributions from Mallett and seven of his companies.

As icing on the cake, Jindal also had the Department of Corrections ISSUE A DIRECTIVE to state parole and probation officers to FUNNEL OFFENDERS into Mallett’s halfway house in Lacassine.

The board of supervisors’ web page offers a typical glowing BIOGRAPHY of Mallett, who dropped out of McNeese State University after a single semester..

While the ATS web page touted training in pipefitting, welding, electrical, millwright, heavy equipment operator and instrumentation fitter, at least one district attorney who refers offenders to facilities such as ACADEMY OF TRAINING SKILLS (ATS) said he has experienced numerous complaints about the program and no longer refers offenders to ATS.

Because of complaints about Mallett’s ATS, however, one district attorney stopped referrals and began sending clients to Cenikor Foundation, a Houston-based center with facilities in Baton Rouge.

“We just stopped sending people to ATS,” a spokesman for the DA’s office said. “The jobs they were getting our people were jobs hamburger flipping at fast food restaurants, not technical skills. The claims that they are providing medical treatment don’t seem to be valid, either, because our referrals told us they received no medical treatment.

“Moreover, ATS works these people and pays money into personal accounts for each resident, which is certainly an accepted practice,” he said. “However, without exception, when our referrals completed their programs there, instead of receiving the money in their accounts, they wound up owing ATS money.”

Lest one get the idea we’re picking on Mallett, it would only be fair to point out that others made pretty substantial political contributions to Landry and were subsequently appointed to the board: In all, 12 board members and/or their companies combined to contribute $281,500 to Landry

Attorney JOHN CARMOUCHE and his law firm, Talbot Carmouche and Marcello contributed $60,000 to Landry’s campaign coffers in 2021 and 2023.

ESPERANZA MORAN is the wife of Shreveport oil man Scott Moran and while she has made no contributions personally to Landry, her husband has chipped in $40,600 since 2015.

BLAISE ZUSCHLAG is CEO and Executive Vice President of Acadian Ambulance. The company’s political action committee funneled $32,500 to Landry between 2011 and 2022.

 New Orleans attorney RODERICK ALVENDIA and his law firm, Alvendia Kelly and Demares, gave $27,500.

Opelousas attorney PATRICK MORROW and his law firm, Morow Morrow Ryan & Bassett, contributed $25,000 between 2017 and 2023.

RAYMOND MORRIS and his company, West Carroll Health Systems, combined to contribute $12,500.

Former LSU and professional basketball player COLLIS TEMPLE who today operates several group homes for adjudicated youths, and SCOTT BALLARD each contributed $10,000.

New Orleans attorney JAMES M. WILLIAM ponied up a paltry $4,000.

REBECCA BONIOL and LAURIE LIPSEY ARONSON brought up the rear among the 12 members who contributed to Landry.

Boniol, who with her husband, owns automobile dealerships in Lake Charles and Shreveport, gave $3,000 and Aronson, CEO of Lipsey’s and Haspel, a firearms dealership, gave $2,500.

Now, having once more illustrated how money talks in politics while sound policy walks, it’s interesting to note that Monday’s Baton Rouge Advocate had an interesting story about how applications from students to attend LSU have increased about 110 percent, from 29,000 to 62,000 since 2020.

A little more than double the applications in six years is pretty substantial, but with that could come problems.

That could be attributed to a major change that took place eight years ago. In 2018, the state’s flagship university de-emphasized two major criteria for admission to the school. Whereas he had required a 3.0 high school GPA and a score of 22 on the ACT college entrance exam, the new standards opened the doors for more admissions. Then-President F. King Alexander lowered ADMISSION STANDARDS that leaned more on essays and recommendations than it did test scores.

The problem with opening the doors to so many more students in such a short time is LSU is already years and tens of millions of dollars behind in maintenance to its physical plant. Where will so many new students be housed? How many more instructors and professors will have to be hired to teach so many new students? Will LSU have sufficient classroom space to accommodate such an increase in humanity? And where on earth will that many more students find parking spaces on campus? More campus police will have to be added to the payroll to protect property and prevent an inevitable surge in campus crime.

Those are just a few of the growing pain problems LSU is going to be facing because of the relaxed admission standards.

And campaign contributions in exchange for board appointments and the perks that do with an appointment aren’t going to solve those problems.