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Former USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue could become Georgia’s next public university chancellor

Sonny Perdue has served two terms as Georgia’s governor and four years as secretary of agriculture during the Trump administration. The next stop on his reinvention tour may land him at the head of his home state’s public university system, as chancellor of Georgia’s public university system. From that position, Perdue told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he hopes to bring “more conservative values” to one of the country’s largest public higher education systems, which is 340,000-students strong. While many students and faculty have balked at his campaigning for the job (not in the sense of a standard political race), Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has continued to press for the appointment of his political ally (Perdue supported Kemp’s 2002 Georgia State Senate run and persuaded Trump to endorse his gubernatorial race in 2018). After last year’s redistricting led to the ineligibility of two members of the state’s 19-person Board of Regents, which oversees its public university system, Kemp appointed two key donors to the recently vacated seats, and that move could tip the scale in Perdue’s favor. —Safiya Charles

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