Landry calls on LSU to discipline professor for alleged speech

Louisiana’s Republican governor is publicly attacking a Louisiana State University law professor for allegedly making brief comments during class about students who voted for President-elect Donald Trump. Gov. Jeff Landry shared the professor’s video on social media on Nov. 17, then sent a letter to LSU on Monday calling on authorities to discipline him.

The day after the election, Professor Nicholas Bryner, who serves as director of LSU’s Climate Change Law and Policy Project, allegedly made convoluted remarks in class directed at students who supported Trump, noting that the law school’s black students felt uncomfortable.

Yesterday Landry published on X AND Instagram again about Bryner, sharing a letter he sent to LSU with the caption “Our administration will not stand by while this professor defies the votes of the 76 million Americans who voted for @realdonaldtrump.”

Landry’s letter says he issued an executive order this fall “to promote and protect free speech at all institutions of higher education throughout Louisiana.” On X, he shared the letter using his verified government account; he then reposted the post using his personal account, adding the caption, “Today’s lesson: teaching college professors what free speech is.”

Academic freedom groups were quick to point out the stark disconnect between what Landry claims to protect and what it does. “Beware of an official who comes in and calls for censorship under the banner of free speech,” said Adam Steinbaugh, a lawyer for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression Inside the Higher Edition.

“It is ironic that the governor begins by touting his executive order on free speech “in a letter whose obvious purpose is to encourage the administration and board to discipline a faculty member for exercising free speech.”—Greg Scholtz, senior program specialist at the American Association of University Professors , wrote in an email to Inside the Higher Edition. “Clearly, the effect of this letter will be to restrict the academic freedom of professors in Louisiana.”

Neither LSU, Bryner nor Landry returned Inside the Higher Editionrequest for comment on Tuesday.

This isn’t Landry’s first venture into higher education. Earlier this year, he signed a bill requiring a copy of the Ten Commandments to be posted in every classroom in Louisiana’s public colleges, universities and vocational schools, as well as in elementary and secondary schools. (Federal judge blocked the law.) This isn’t Landry’s first attempt at getting involved with LSU either; in September, he began persuading the university to take an 8-year-old live tiger mascot to football games, Louisiana Illuminator reported. After LSU refused, Landry brought a borrowed tiger from Florida.

It is unclear who recorded the alleged video of Bryner’s classroom comments or who forwarded it to the governor.

Landry posted the first message video from his November 17 government account with the caption “This professor stood up to the 76 million Americans who voted for President @realDonaldTrump to silence and belittle those in his class who voted for our next president. This is not the type of behavior we want at @LSU and our universities.”

In the 90-second clip, a person identified as Bryner tells students that “if your justification for voting for Trump is that you don’t like him personally but you like his policies, I’ll just say it’s your decision.” prove it by your behavior and the way you treat other people around you. Because I will say that I hear a lot about how groups of people in law school, particularly black students, don’t feel comfortable there, don’t feel welcome.”

“I want you all to think a little bit about why this is happening,” Bryner continues. “And I don’t know if anyone falls into this category, but if you voted for Trump with the belief that you don’t like him personally but you like his policies, I want you to think about the message that this sends to other people and how you can prove it by treating other people in a way that reflects their feelings.”

In his original post, Landry did not specifically call for Bryner’s punishment. But he did so in a letter he sent Monday to the chairman of LSU’s governing board, the Board of Trustees, in which he copied statements from the state attorney general, LSU’s president, the dean of the law school and other LSU board members.

“If the school does not discipline Mr. Bryner for his comments, I hope the board will look into this matter, as LSU professors are prohibited from using state resources to influence public policy,” Landry wrote.

While that part of his letter didn’t cite any state law or specify how Bryner was impacting “public policy,” it did point to Landry’s executive order and a law passed earlier this year that says, among other things: “No professor nor an instructor conducting classes with students at a university is obliged to impose the political views of the professor or instructor on the students.” However, the law does not specifically address classroom speech; it only notes that professors cannot require students to engage in political activities outside of class.

Landry wrote that Bryner “went so far as to question the character of students who voted for a particular candidate.” His letter included a transcript of Bryner’s alleged comments going beyond the end of the video, in which the professor allegedly says: “I see this vote really as a rejection of the idea that we are governed by people with expertise… There is quite a rejection of the idea that we are governed by experts, so I think that it’s worth considering and thinking about when… you finish your law school career and start practicing law – how you will deal with these types of sentiment problems.”

Landry suggested that Bryner was talking about topics unrelated to his classes. Steinbaugh disputed this.

“He’s a professor who uses current events to talk about civility,” Steinbaugh said. In law school, “civility is drilled into you.”

Steinbaugh said that if Landry takes the position that merely sharing political views in the classroom is the same as imposing them on students, it means that professors will never be allowed to share their opinions in the classroom – no matter how they are important.

“This is censorship that would violate the First Amendment,” Steinbaugh said.