Louisiana Voice

Cankle Ankle Trump’s $400 million ballroom construction project aside, there is a lot of other proposed mega-building construction taking place throughout the country with but scant information about the potential impact it might have on local communities.

And Louisiana is right in the thick of it all.

On the one hand, ICE is discreetly snapping EMPTY WAREHOUSES for conversion to massive detention centers capable of storing as many as 8,000 to 10,000 human beings indefinitely without benefit of attorneys or due process.

On the other, water-gulping data centers are also cropping up that will perform God-knows-what functions, buildings that promise to dwarf Walmart supercenters.

Squeaky toy Jeff Landry says the announced Amazon $12 billion center in the Caddo and Bossier parish area will create 540 new permanent jobs as well as 1700 indirect new job opportunities in the state’s northwest region.

Already, construction had begun on another $10 billion (but already edging up to $30 billion in cost) Meta-run AI data center about 100 miles to the east along I-20 in RICHLAND PARISH. It promises to eat up more electric power in a day than the entire city of New Orleans on one of those typically sweltering hot August days.

Anthropic plans a similar $10 billion facility in West Feliciana Parish

But get this: the Richland Parish data center, located in the tiny community of Holly Ridge, is registered to use an astonishing 23 MILLION GALLONS OF WATER PER DAY, or 8.4 billion gallons per year. Those in northwest Louisiana and West Feliciana Parish promise to be equally thirsty for water and power, which is certain to adversely affect consumer rates in the area.

But the bigger—much bigger—question should be: just what in the name of George Orwell’s 1984 will these data systems be used for? Besides posing as a significant drain on subsurface water tables and creating unfathomable demands on electric power, questions should abound on exactly what type of data is expected to be gathered by all these data centers.

The industry as a whole has been criticized for its lack of transparency in development decision. In Louisiana, local and state officials have created seeming airtight NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENTS (NDAs) in order to hide the economic development process.

But in an era of Trumpian dystopia when Repugnantcans openly espouse less government intrusion in our personal lives while privately obsessing over our bedroom preferences, our health care, blocking our preferences over the quality of air and water we breathe and drink and stripping away our rights little by little, it’s more than a little alarming to contemplate just how much personal information Big Brother is amassing on us in those mammoth data centers.

Perhaps the promise of good-paying jobs for the few is supposed to assuage the concerns of tens of thousands of others living in the area of these monster structures.

As if those concerns are not enough, there’s the hush-hush effort to buy up empty warehouse space for conversion to DETENTION CENTERS to hold thousands upon thousands of people, most of whom have never done a thing to harm us and in fact, probably have a lower overall crime rate than the general population of this country.

We have those who claim these undocumented people are taking our jobs but an equal number claim they’re freeloaders. They can’t be both. And while they’re claiming that they’re a drain on society, ICE keeps raiding work sites to apprehend them. At the same time, claims are made that they’re taking up our housing while remaining homeless. And Trump’s claim that millions of undocumented types are voting illegally, that is a myth, as well; Even as state legislatures like our very own in Louisiana are passing legislation making it illegal for undocumenteds to vote, it’s already illegal for them to vote and precious few cases of illegal voting have been certified, Trump’s wild claims notwithstanding.

Yet, here we are, building more and bigger prisons to hold these people indefinitely, converting many working people into those wards of the state the Repugnantcans are so damned concerned about.

And more and more, bigger and bigger data centers to keep tabs on the rest of us.

What in the name of Adderall-induced dementia was Mar-A-Lardo Trump thinking when he made the announcement on Truth Social that he was sending a Navy hospital ship—that just happens to be unavailable to sail anywhere—to GREENLAND, which doesn’t want or need the help, on a humanitarian mission to aid in a non-existent health crisis?

Adderall, for the MAGHATS reading this, is taken for the treatment of narcolepsy (not to be confused with epilepsy or necrophilia.)

And just what is Jeff Landry’s role going to be in this head-scratcher?

Could this be a thinly-disguised plan for a military invasion of the country with Landry’s being promoted to Rear Admiral to carry out the attack in an aircraft carrier with a big red cross painted on its bow?

One reader posed the not-so-tongue-in-cheek question, “If part-time governor Landry wants to pull a Trumpian stunt, why not anchor a Navy hospital ship at New Orleans and offer medical care to those who need it?”

Ah, but that makes too much sense to be a viable proactive decision for anyone in Louisiana politics. I mean after all, we have a state legislator from New Iberia as a (legally, I might add) candidate for Congress representing Julia Letlow’s district which is comprised mostly of parishes up around the Arkansas border.

But back to Greenland and that crushing need for humanitarian help. Just what is the urgency, anyway? Well, one American sailor got ill onboard his ship and the good folks of Greenland took him in to a hospital for treatment—treatment that is free in that country, by the way.

And what about America’s two hospital ships? Both the USNS Mercy and the USNS Comfort are themselves incapacitated—sort of like that sick American sailor—because they are in dry dock undergoing maintenance until sometime around July, which kind of makes Trump’s message that a ship is “on the way” seem a little out there in la-la land.

Bear in mind, if you will, this is the same guy who is shutting down FEMA, who denied assistance to the West Coast when it was on fire and who still has not managed to be of much help to the hurricane victims in North Carolina.

That “fantastic” Landry has remained eerily quiet on the topic thus far. What with the 2026 regular session of the Louisiana Legislature cranking up two weeks from today, it would seem that Squeaky Toy would have his hands full splitting time between Baton Rouge and Nuuk.

But one astute reader did note that when she first heard that Cankle Ankles had enlisted Landry’s help, “I assumed we were sending the Cajun Navy to deliver some gumbo to the sick soldier. That’s the most those two might pull off.”

As Larry the Cable Guy would say, “Now that’s funny, I don’t care who you are.”

But, hey, perhaps Landry can dispatch former veterinarian, former pharmaceutical salesman, former congressman, former gubernatorial candidate, former Louisiana surgeon general and former CDC principal deputy director Ralph Abraham (who served in the latter post “with clarity and discipline,” according to a CDC statement) along to supervise U.S. naval and Greenland surgeons with his “clarity and discipline” as they toil to bring this medical catastrophe to a happy outcome. One wonders what the reaction to all this by Doctors Without Borders might be.

Fifth paragraph below photo of Mike Rivault that begins, “Yeargain, who has acknowledged…” should read, “Rushing, who has acknowledged…”

For those who perhaps assumed the dispute between DR. FERESHTEH EMAMI and the administration at Southeastern Louisiana University was an outlier and that all was generally well on the Hammond campus, think again.

There are at least three other disputes between professors and the school’s administration in addition to efforts by the university to charge exorbitant rates for copies of public records—or even examining records. Access to view public records is supposed to be available at no charge, according to Louisiana’s PUBLIC RECORDS ACT, (R.S. 44:1 et seq).

As for accessing public records, it’s pretty much a crap shoot. When LouisianaVoice attempted to learn if SLU had paid for a fluff piece on school President William Wainwright in CEO MAGAZINE, we were first told by SLU spokesperson Mike Rivault that the school had three working days in which to respond to our request.

It doesn’t.

R.S. 44:1 et seq clearly says that the custodian of public records must provide the requested records immediately if they are not in use. If they are in use, the custodian must respond immediately with a date—within three working days—as to when they will be available.

When so informed, Rivault said the payment for the pay-to-play piece was made by the school’s foundation and that he would obtain the information for us by the next day.

He didn’t. When a follow-up request was made, he replied that there was no such record.

Yet, Rivault had earlier quoted an actual price of $1250 to another individual for the same information. Bear in mind, if you will, that a simple accounting for a single cost item should probably run more than one page—a $1250 page. Yet another request for the same information by the group Louisiana Citizens Against Censorship (LACAC) was met with the bargain basement price of a paltry $128 which, according the state law, is still a tad steep.

SLU’s Senior Marketing and Communications Leader Mike Rivault. At right is Louisiana Federation of Teachers representative Tara LaFrance.

But hey, that’s chicken feed at for a public record at SLU. One other individual, a professor on campus, was quoted $21,000 at $25 per page just to view another set of records.

But public records requests and SLU’s non-compliance aside, there are larger issues that beg the attention of the courts.

In Steven J. Rushing v. John Yeargain, a case that has its origins in September and October of 2018, more than seven years ago, Rushing is appealing the DISMISSAL of his lawsuit by the U.S. Middle District Court in February 2025.

In another curious lawsuit, it seems that Peter Gratton, a history an assistant professor of political science may have actually had the appeal of his termination denied before the appeal board had even met to consider his appeal.

Rushing, who has acknowledged he suffers from depression and bipolar II and is “an idealist and a gadfly” unable to ignore what he considers an injustice, claims he was heckled and removed from a faculty senate meeting on Oct. 3, 2018, subsequently refused the school’s efforts to have him undergo psychological evaluation and eventually fired from his music professorship position.

He claims that his intended addressed to the faculty senate on Sept. 26 and Oct. 3, 2018, “were not routine workplace grievances, but instead research findings protected by academic freedom and commentary on matters of public concern, including:

Fraud, misrepresentation, and breach of public trust at Southeastern Louisiana University, such as administrative deception, violations of SELU fraud policies, and false budgetary claims regarding the use of public funds at a state university;

• Lack of faculty governance and procedural compliance for FS meetings, highlighting violations of Faculty Senate Constitution and Bylaws, suppression of faculty proposals, and administrative manipulation, restricting the ability of faculty to conduct true open meetings;

• Insufficient leadership accountability and oversight of the Faculty Senate Executive Council, raising issues of transparency in the governing of a publicly funded university;

• Academic freedom and the right to publish, emphasizing the public’s interest in promoting scholarship, teaching, and research;

• Viewpoint discrimination and free-speech suppression, addressing how the selective silencing of faculty based on criticisms of institutional policy in a faculty-governance forum violates the First Amendment;

• Grievance and due process failures, exposing failure to provide due process as required by university policy and state law, and failure to investigate illegal acts.

• Broader reforms and public accountability in Louisiana’s higher education system, urging adherence to contractual, ethical, financial, and academic standards.

Gratton began his sixth year as an assistant professor at SLU in 2023. Once in his sixth year, he became eligible for tenure review and he so informed his department head of his intent to apply. SLU, however, notified Dr. Gratton of his non-reappointment during his sixth year. While the decision to grant tenure is within the discretion of SLU, Dr. Gratton’s eligibility for tenure review during his sixth year is not discretionary based on SLU’s and the Board of Supervisors’ own policies, his lawsuit asserts.

He said SLU’s Policy on Termination and Non-reappointment of Faculty, “[n]otice that a probationary appointment is not to be renewed shall be given to the faculty in advance of the expiration of the appointment “at least 12 months before the expiration of an appointment after two or more years of uninterrupted service at the institution.” That required notice, he says, was not given.

He says in his petition that on Aug. 30, 2023, he received a letter from the department chair requesting that he (Gratton) change the date on the My 31, 2023, non-reappointment letter “to render it compliant” with the school’ policy on termination. He says he refused to do so.

He said he informed his department head of his intent to apply for tenure on Sept. 5, 2023, a full 10 days ahead of the Sept. 15 deadline. Once a faculty member expresses intent, the tenure review process commences, he said. Instead, SLU notified Dr. Gratton of his “non-appointment” on Sept. 11, 2023, with an effective date of Dec. 17, 2024.

Because he felt SLU had deviated from its own policies, he filed an internal grievance with the university. The Faculty Senate Grievance Committee chair did not attend the committee meeting so it was ruled that the committee did not have authority to adjudicate the issues relating to tenure, promotion and reappointment.

Consequently, Gratton simultaneously filed an external grievance with the Louisiana State Board of Supervisors for Colleges and Universities.

This is where it begins to get a bit dicey.

Prior to the commencement of the (board of supervisors’) committee hearing—and before Gratton had an opportunity to be heard—“Dr. Gratton discovered, in the electronic folder for the hearing, the decision of the board with respect to Dr. Gratton’s grievance.

“This decision Dr. Gratton discovered before the hearing was identical to the decision conveyed to Dr. Gratton after the hearing and stated the process used by [SLU] regarding Dr. Gratton’s grievance be upheld and that no further consideration be given” his appeal.

Uh oh.

Someone screwed up by releasing the final decision of the board before the board even met. That equates to sloppy—but perhaps typical—Louisiana political chicanery.

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.