Sonny Perdue, ex-agriculture secretary under Trump (bio here), reportedly is a leading contender for chancellor of Georgia’s public university system, and students and faculty are mobilizing against him, Mother Jones reports. (Read story here.)
Perdue has zero experience managing a university. As a science denier, he’s better suited for running a hotdog stand. “Sonny Perdue might be the least distinguished, least prepared potential university leader I’ve seen in my life,” Mother Jones quoted a veteran observer of university governance.
The reason he’s under consideration is simple: Georgia’s governor — currently Republican Brian Kemp — effectively picks the chancellor, and Perdue is a former Georgia governor and a Republican. Being a Trump buddy also doesn’t hurt.
For this blog’s deep dive into university administration, click here. By linking to this post, I’m not insinuating that Georgia’s universities would be better off run by farm animals than a MAGA science denier.
I’m saying it.
Photo: If I had to pick a university chancellor, and my choices were limited to these candidates, I’d go with one of the goats.
Actually it is the board of regents that picks the chancellor. They and the Chancellor are over all of Georgia’s universities. This position is more about politics and managing the system than being a professor or actually teaching.
From the Mother Jones article (did you read it?): “The governor appoints the regents responsible for hiring the chancellor, and although they formally choose the chancellor, the … governor typically makes the call ….”
Could they reject the governor’s preferred candidate? Yes. Will they? That’s uphill, given that Gov. Kemp appointed 5 of the regents and 2 more are Perdue cronies. But the outcry from faculty and students is giving the other regents pause.
In most university systems, the chancellor is someone from academia, not a politician. There’s a compelling reason for that beyond just knowing something about the institution they’re managing.
Keeping partisan politics out of university administration is essential to maintaining universities as impartial institutions of scholarly inquiry and learning. Having politicians run colleges would severely compromise their function.