The following story caught my attention. I’m using it as a case study describing what happened to many scientists in the USDA under the watch of Sunny Perdue, former governor of Georgia and the next chancellor of the University System of Georgia (USG).

The story of a USDA scientist forced to move or quit

Dr. Randi Johnson^[1] is a twenty-eight-year veteran of the USDA, where she most recently led its program on climate change. She is one of 550 USDA scientists who were told that their offices and departments were being moved from Washington, DC, to Kansas City. She did not want to move west. And she did not want to quit her job. 

She had spearheaded the climate change program at the Department of Agriculture and worked with forest scientists to help them find funding for their projects. She had earned a PhD in forest genetics and a master’s in forest soils. After years working in Brazil and New Zealand, she became a leading scientist at USDA. Her family was in Virginia, and her daughter had recently given birth to Johnson’s first grandchild. Moving to Kansas City was worrisome for Randi because she was a sixty-two-year-old transgender woman. She lost her wife a few years before to breast cancer as well as a son who overdosed on opioids, and she was involved in her neighborhood and church. She searched for jobs in the DC area but was unsuccessful. She decided to retire, but because she was getting out earlier (age sixty-two rather than sixty-seven), her income would be reduced by $18,000 per year.

Randi wasn’t the only person blindsided by Secretary Sonny Perdue’s decision to retaliate because House Democrats had released independent research that didn’t match the Trump administration’s talking points on climate change, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides nutrition benefits to needy families, and other food and agricultural issues.

The announcement to relocate was made in June 2019. Employees would have to move by September. Two-thirds of the employees decided to quit rather than move 1,057 miles. Initially employees who chose not to move were offered a buyout payment of $25,000. But because so many Agriculture Department scientists chose not to relocate, Perdue lowered the payout to $10,000. If employees accepted the buyout, they could not return to federal employment for five years.

Perdue’s decision to move so many scientists was to weaken and dismantle the USDA. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists and the American Federation of Government Employees, the move not only was a blatant attack on science but also resulted in a dangerous loss of top research scientists (2).

University System of Georgia

The work of scientists anywhere, from the USDA to any of the science departments at Georgia’s 26 universities, is dependent on the freedom to investigate, and ask questions in an environment that is supportive of scientific inquiry. (Disclosure: I am an emeritus professor of science education at Georgia State University.) To retaliate against scientists who were investigating the effects of climate change on agriculture and food production, is a breach of ethical and moral values that underscore inquiry. The fact that more a thousand people were forced give up their lives and either move hundreds of miles away or resign is a dangerous and malicious act of betrayal.

This example at the USDA does not bode well for professors at across the USG universities. Teaching is a remarkable field of inquiry which is fulfilled when professors work without the intrusion of political motives or partisan prejudices. Purdue was quoted as saying that he wants conservative values given more attention in Georgia colleges. This is a sign that politics will intrude into our university classrooms as well as areas of inquiry and teaching.

Perdue spent four years coddling Trump and was accused of breaking the law in North Carolina, in which he told people at a farm conference that they should vote for Donald Trump in the November election. This is a violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits a government official from campaigning on the government’s dime. The White House responded by saying that no one outside the Beltway cares a flip about the Hatch Act. 

Secrecy dominated the election process for the chancellor’s position. For many of us the next chancellor will be tainted because of the undemocratic method used to hire him. As many professors have said, the man is not qualified.

Sonny, David and Brian: A Political Threesome

Higher education in Georgia, in my opinion, is at risk. The fact that Perdue stood with Trump means his belief system will be a challenge to free and open inquiry. In a recent article in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution (AJC), Randi Malamud, Regents’ Professor of English at Georgia State University said that a nominee for the chancellor’s position should have higher education experience. Anyone not having that experience should not be considered for the position. This idea was ignored, and the appointment of him to the lofty position was purely political. Purdue and Governor Brian Kemp are political allies, and Kemp’s push to give the job to Sonny was to interfere with the campaign of Sonny’s cousin, David Purdue, former senator from Georgia, and now a candidate for governor of Georgia. Kemp and David Purdue will battle each other in the Republican primary for the governorship this summer. It’s expected that nearly 10 million dollars will be spent during the campaign.

The fact that Sonny Perdue was a four-year veteran of the Trump administration suggests that he will be threat to scientific and literary integrity. I predict that he will be involved with, either overtly or behind closed doors, Republican lawmakers to bring conservative values into the mix of higher education. His sitting at the helm of the Georgia system will create an uneasy environment in higher education classrooms and research proposals.

He supported Trump and the two secretaries of the EPA’s effort to push back on climate change discussions and proposals. The EPA, USDA and some other departments lost many senior scientists resulting in a brain-drain in US government scientific community. Could this happen in some departments across the University System of Georgia’s 26 universities and colleges.

Randi Johnson, a former USDA scientist would tell us that we should be on the look out for trouble.

^[1] Hannah Natanson, The USDA relocation to Kansas City is ripping apart the lives of its employees. here are some of their stories, September 8, 2019, The Washington Post. Retrieved February 11, 2022, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/the-usda-relocation-to-kansas-city-is-ripping-apart-the-lives-of-its-employees-here-are-some-of-their-stories/2019/09/07/9108a3b0-c935-11e9-a1fe-ca46e8d573c0_story.html

(2) Excerpted from Jack Hassard, The Trump Files: An Account of the Trump Administration’s Effect on American Democracy, Human Rights, Science, and Public Health. Marietta, GA: Northington-Hearn Publishing (forthcoming, August 2022)