Kimberly
Terrell
resigned
from
her
role
as
director
of
community
engagement
at
Tulane’s
Environmental
Law
Clinic
after
law
school
administrators
slapped
a
gag
order
on
the
clinic
doing
any
“engaging”
of
the
“community”
over
its
work.
The
Environmental
Law
Clinic
represents
numerous
residents
of
Louisiana’s
“Cancer
Alley,”
a
long
stretch
of
riverside
communities
suffering
from
industries
using
the
Mississippi
River
as
a
toxic
dumping
ground
for
decades.
The
clinic
also
produces
research
detailing
the
impact
of
the
pollution
on
residents,
having
found
both
statistically
higher
cancer
rates
and
incidence
of
premature
and
underweight
births.
While
suffering
the
brunt
of
the
damage,
the
Black
community
in
Louisiana
also
got
significantly
fewer
jobs
in
the
petrochemical
industry
when
controlled
for
training
and
education
according
to
the
clinic’s
studies.
All
the
negatives,
few
of
the
positives.
As
one
might
imagine,
the
state’s
Republican
government
and
big-pocketed
bosses
don’t
appreciate
anyone
pointing
out
the
damage
being
done
by
unchecked
industry,
but
no
one
expected
a
private
law
school
to
cater
to
those
complaints.
Marcilynn
Burke,
dean
of
Tulane’s
law
school,
wrote
in
a
May
4
to
clinic
staff
that
Tulane
University
President
Michael
Fitts
worried
the
clinic’s
work
threatened
to
tank
support
for
the
university’s
long-sought
efforts
to
redevelop
New
Orleans’
historic
Charity
Hospital
as
part
of
a
downtown
expansion.“Elected
officials
and
major
donors
have
cited
the
clinic
as
an
impediment
to
them
lending
their
support
to
the
university
generally
and
this
project
specifically,”
Burke
wrote.
School
administrators
shouldn’t
have
to
deal
with
elected
officials
abusing
the
public
trust
to
lean
on
private
schools
to
stifle
academic
work,
but
those
are
the
breaks.
But
holding
the
line,
sticking
up
for
the
academic
mission,
and
maybe
making
a
few
hardball
threats
about
making
a
big
deal
about
killing
the
new
home
for
the
public
health
school
just
to
protect
donor
egos…
that’s
the
job.
What’s
not
part
of
the
job
is
downplaying
cancer
research
because
the
governor’s
office
is
sad.
For
what
it’s
worth,
the
governor’s
office
said
they
never
threatened
to
withhold
funding,
which
sounds
like
the
sort
of
denial
an
office
makes
when
they’ve
very
carefully
never
explicitly
said
a
particular
set
of
words.
In
her
resignation
letter,
Terrell
wrote
that
she
had
been
told
the
governor
“threatened
to
veto”
any
state
funding
for
the
expansion
project
unless
Tulane’s
president
“did
something”
about
the
clinic.
The
AP
report
suggests
that
what
the
school
“did”
about
the
clinic
was
impose
a
gag
order
on
“all
external
communications”
from
social
media
posts
to
interviews
without
administration
approval.
The
administration
then
blanket
denied
all
requests.
In
a
May
21
audio
recording
obtained
by
the
AP,
Provost
Robin
Forman
said
that
when
Tulane
leadership
met
with
elected
officials
in
April,
they
were
pressed
as
to
why
“‘Tulane
has
taken
a
stand
on
the
chemical
industry
as
harming
communities’,”
and
this
“left
people
feeling
embarrassed
and
uncomfortable.”
You
know
what
can
be
embarrassing
and
uncomfortable?
Dying
slowly
of
cancer
while
state
officials
cover
it
up.
The
AP
collected
so
many
smoking
guns
for
this
report
that
they
should
be
immediately
shipping
them
to
our
allies
in
Ukraine.
They
got
the
dean
citing
the
university
president
questioning
how
this
research
was
connected
to
representing
clients…
when
the
research
is
cited
in
the
court
filings!
It’s
definitely
bad
that
a
private
school
is
on
marionette
strings
held
by
the
governor,
but
at
least
as
a
private
actor,
Tulane
is
free
to
make
its
own
bad
decisions.
The
real
danger
to
higher
education
is
when
public
institutions
become
propaganda
factories
for
the
government,
an
ever-growing
risk
as
conservatives
starve
public
schools
of
resources
and
then
come
for
the
foreign
student
tuition
that
many
use
to
fill
the
gap.
A
more
dependent
education
system
coupled
with
government
officials
willing
to
abuse
their
offices
makes
a
noxious
cocktail.
On
par
with
drinking
out
of
the
Mississippi.
Tulane
scientist
resigns
citing
university
censorship
of
pollution
and
racial
disparity
research
[AP]
Joe
Patrice is
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Law
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Like
A
Lawyer.
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