LSU Fires Ivor van Heerden
In what can only be perceived as a shot across the bow of scientific and academic freedom, a noted proponent for hurricane readiness and flood protection around the Louisiana coast has been let go from that state’s largest university:
Louisiana State University (LSU) will not renew the contract of controversial hurricane scientist Ivor van Heerden, according to nola.com. Dr. van Heerden has been stripped of his title as deputy director of the LSU Hurricane Center, and will lose his job in May 2010. The Director of the LSU Hurricane Center, engineering professor Marc Levitan, resigned from that post in protest over the firing of van Heerden. LSU has given no reason why it is removing Dr. van Heerden.
The reasons couldn’t possibly be because van Heerdon was fiercely critical of the lack of planning before Katrina and the bungled relief effort afterward. The latter of which he was told put his university’s federal funding at risk during the vindictive as hell Bush administration.
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