An excerpt:

“It fast tracks dismissing a faculty member and it puts a lot of authority and power in the hands of the Board of Regents, who do not have to have the same standards of lack of conflict of interest and lack of political motives that the faculty do,” Murray says.

Regents are appointed by the governor and most don’t have experience in higher education. The current board is a mix of Regents chosen by Gov. Brian Kemp, former Gov. Nathan Deal, and his predecessor Gov. Sonny Perdue. Kemp declined WABE’s request to comment on the tenure changes, deferring to the Regents.

Yanni Loukissas also teaches Digital Media at Georgia Tech. Like Murray, he’s tenured. He sees the tenure changes as political and retaliatory.

“[The modifications] just so happened to come out right at the same time that a lot of us faculty were speaking out against the lack of mask mandates, the lack of social distancing, the lack of vaccine mandates, which has been putting us all at risk,” he says.