An East Baton Rouge Parish district judge struck a positive blow for freedom of speech Thursday when he told LSU it had to immediately allow law professor Ken Levy to return to teaching.

The Advocate reported that Judge Donald Johnson’s temporary restraining order said LSU cannot infringe on Levy’s “rights to free speech and due process of laws.” And the university must avoid “further harassing or retaliating” against Levy “on account of his protected academic freedom and free speech.”

A Feb. 10 court date has been set to hear testimony and evidence in the case and the temporary restraining order is in effect for the time being. LSU said it would continue forward with a thorough investigation.

LSU professors, unfortunately, have become targets of Gov. Jeff Landry and other Republicans who obviously don’t believe in free speech, one of the major guarantees in the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

Landry earlier targeted Nicholas Bryner, an environmental law professor and director of LSU’s Climate Change Law and Policy Project, for comments he made in November about President Donald Trump, who had won the election but hadn’t been inaugurated.

Landry in a letter asked the LSU Board of Supervisors to have the university take disciplinary action. He said LSU professors are prohibited from utilizing state resources to influence public policy.

I’m not sure how criticizing Trump has something to do with influencing public policy. Bryner’s views are his own. He urged those who don’t like Trump personally but who voted for him to live by example.

“Because I will say that I hear a lot about how groups of people in the law school, particularly Black students, don’t feel comfortable in the law school, who don’t feel welcome here. And so I want you all to think a little about why that is.”

It all sounds like good advice and no real cause for alarm.

Levy was the next target for comments he made during a first-year law school class. He spoke out against Landry’s November criticism of Bryner and against Trump.

Levy filed suit against LSU. Jill Craft, Levy’s attorney, had earlier said her client referred to Trump “in some colorful terms.”

The lawsuit says Levy told his students he was a Democrat, gave his “rather colorful opinion” on the outcome of the November presidential election and said students who like Trump are entitled to that opinion.

Kristen Graham-Winkles, 36, who was in Levy’s class, said, “Political conformity is being demanded, intellectual diversity is being crushed and dissent is being punished.” She added, “This is part of a bigger, more dangerous pattern we are seeing across the country.”

About the same time Landry complained about Professor Bryner’s comments about Trump in November, CBS-TV’s “60 Minutes” had a great program about a unique Texas  university.

John Wertheim of “60 Minutes” called The University of Austin a college start-up touting open debate and a shout-nothing-but-say-anything philosophy. He asked a student why it was important to be at a college where differing views aren’t just accepted and tolerated, but welcome.

The student said, “We’re actually listening to the other side and understanding each other. And still we’re friends with each other…”

Scottish-born, Oxford-educated and recently knighted Niall Ferguson is one of the founders of the university. Wertheim said Ferguson is an historian who is also known for his conservative views.

Ferguson said, “Right up until I guess the early 2000s, it seemed like universities were the places where you could think most freely, and speak most freely, and take the most intellectual risk. And at some point in the last 10 years, that changed. And it changed in a way that began to stifle free expression.”

Pano Kanelos, the president of the University of Austin, had some good advice for those who are always quick to make judgments about what university professors are saying in class.

“It’s as if people have come to expect that there are just sort of two versions of everything,” Kanelos said. “And therefore, there’s a right version and a wrong version, and depending on which side you stand. But the truth is that one opinion meeting another opinion shouldn’t leave us with two opinions; it should leave us with better opinions.”

Jim Beam, the retired editor of the American Press, has covered people and politics for more than six decades. Contact him at 337-515-8871 or jim.beam.press@gmail.com.

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