A former LSU professor is being accused of having an extramarital affair with his graduate assistant and using them to lobby for the Louisiana Legislature to pass laws criticizing critical race theory.
David Sobek, a political science professor who was terminated by LSU in February, is now being charged by the Louisiana Ethics Administration for reportedly violating restrictions on lobbying as a state employee.
The ethics administration charges allege that Sobek told the graduate student, who they say Sobek was having an affair with, to research which LSU professors had critical race theory in their curriculum and gather the "offending" syllabi.
Critical race theory, or CRT, is defined loosely as a critique of race as a social construct that explores how race and racism function in society.
Sobek then instructed the graduate student to give the syllabi to legislators who Sobek believed would favor passing anti-CRT legislation, according to the charges.
The complaint alleges Sobek told the graduate assistant to look for CRT in the class curriculum of his "estranged wife," who is also an instructor at LSU.
According to Sobek, he and his wife are not separated and are still happily married. He says he reported the graduate assistant for harassment as soon as he heard about the allegations.
"As soon as I found out, I reported to Title IX as harassment and I've been trying to sort of move on with my life ever since," he said.
Sobek is being charged under Louisiana ethics laws that forbid state employees from using their official capacity to lobby for or against any issue with the intended effect of getting certain laws passed.
According to Sobek, the charges are "not necessarily inaccurate" and he has no interest in reliving what he called "a difficult part" of his life.
"I'd rather move on with my life," he said.
Sobek said he did not have a relationship in any way with the graduate assistant, who was unnamed in the complaint, maintaining that he did not communicate with them related to their lobbying efforts.
"I think they have their own motivations for what they did and I'm not going to get into them," he said. "I had no contact with them when they lobbied; I didn't know about the actions until I was told by other people what they were doing."
An associate professor at LSU since 2004 and a full professor since 2014, Sobek was terminated earlier this year.
University records, first released to the Louisiana Illuminator, revealed several details about Sobek's termination, as well as political science department chair Robert Hogan's subsequent examination into the graduate student's claims.
An email from the graduate assistant shows they communicated to several members of the LSU political science department, saying that Sobek forced them to engage in lobbying by threatening them and the students in their courses.
"I have other messages I can show you too if you want to see them where when I questioned the work, he threatened to drop me from the coalition and he told me that not being in a coalition with him would be worse for me," the graduate assistant wrote in an email to the political science faculty. "… suggesting that harm would come my way if I did not continue this work with him."
The graduate assistant alleges that Sobek paid them to do additional work that involved contacting the Legislature, a claim Hogan disputes.
According to Hogan, the graduate assistant was rewarded extra money on top of an agreed assistantship payment, but as a result of a clerical error and no way related to any action by Sobek.
"This is a pattern in many of [redacted] claims, there is often some degree of truth in them, but they are accompanied by additional information that is far less credible or even false," Hogan wrote in an email to executive leadership at LSU. "The underlying premise of [their] current claim is wholly untrue. There is simply no evidence to suggest that David Sobek was secretly funneling LSU payments to [them]."
Sobek is no longer in a teaching role and has chosen to take no legal action against the graduate assistant or LSU, citing his preference to move on.
The Louisiana State Ethics Board, following charges initiated by the complaint, will conduct a confidential investigation. If evidence is found to support the complaint, recommended charges will be handled through an Ethics Adjudicatory Board hearing.
In the complaint outlining the charges, the Board of Ethics recommended a fine of $10,000 against Sobek. A hearing has not yet been scheduled.
"My modus operandi has been to move on with my life," Sobek said. "Difficult situations occur, it's best to sort of move on and that's what I've been trying to do."