Dr. Ivor van Heerden
Ivor van Heerden, former deputy director of the now shuttered LSU Hurricane Center, announced in February 2010 that he was suing LSU for wrongful termination. The outspoken professor claimed LSU retaliated against him for making statements critical of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers after the agency’s levee system failed in New Orleans during Katrina.
Late yesterday, federal Judge James Brady handed the outspoken professor a victory. In an 18-page ruling, Brady determined that Dr. van Heerden’s claim has merit, the claim that LSU retaliated against him when he exercised his whistleblower rights.
“I am quite happy,” said Dr. van Heerden in a phone interview with Levees.org. “Now we will have our day in court.”
Just before the Anniversary of the Federal Flood, Levees.org invited historian and author Walter Isaacson to consider submitting a letter supporting the group’s quest to list the New Orleans levee breaches to the prestigious National Register of Historic Places.
