Louisiana State U. Will Fire Outspoken Hurricane Researcher

Louisiana State University has removed Ivor van Heerden, an outspoken hurricane researcher, from his post as deputy director of the university’s hurricane center and has told him that his contract as an untenured research professor will not be renewed when it ends next year, according to The Times-Picayune, the New Orleans newspaper.

Mr. van Heerden said the university would not tell him why he was being let go, and a university spokeswoman told the newspaper that she could not comment on personnel decisions. But Mr. van Heerden has been a frequent critic of the Army Corps of Engineers since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, in 2005, and may be called to testify against the Corps of Engineers when a suit brought by flooding victims goes to trial this month.

In the wake of the hurricane, Mr. van Heerden was appointed to lead a state investigation into the failure of the levee system around New Orleans. In November of that year, The Times-Picayune said, two assistant chancellors told Mr. van Heerden “to stop talking to the press, because it threatened the university’s ability to get research dollars from the federal government.” Another university official said later that Mr. van Heerden, who was not trained as an engineer, should not have been commenting about civil-engineering topics.

The year before Katrina struck, Mr. van Heerden predicted in an interview with PBS that a Category 3 hurricane could have “the potential for extremely high casualties” in New Orleans, and that the city, once flooded, would remain so for “months and months and months.” —Lawrence Biemiller