Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger discussed absentee voting in Georgia on May 28, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
ATLANTA – A Henry County Superior Court judge dismissed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to inspect 147,000 Fulton County absentee ballots from last November’s election for signs of fraud claimed by supporters of former President Donald Trump.
Judge Brian Amero ruled that activist Garland Favorito of the group VoterGA and eight co-plaintiffs lacked standing to file the suit because they failed to claim a specific injury suffered as a result of alleged fake ballots counted among the Fulton absentees.
The court decision came a day after Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office filed a brief concluding no evidence had been found to substantiate claims of fraud.
“There was no widespread fraud or illegal voting enough to overturn the election,” Raffensperger said Wednesday. “We’ve been saying since Day One the truth is on our side.”
Raffensperger’s office has been bombarded with a series of legal challenges since Democrat Joe Biden carried Georgia last November by nearly 12,000 votes.
During the aftermath of the election, then-President Trump urged Raffensperger in a phone call to “find” the 11,780 votes Trump needed to prevail in Georgia, a key state Biden flipped into the Democrats’ column on his way to victory.
“Today was a win for democracy,” Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts, a Democrat, declared following Amero’s ruling.
“This lawsuit was the result of the Big Lie, which is nothing more than a meritless conspiracy theory being spread by people who simply cannot accept that their side lost. Its defeat here today should echo throughout the nation.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The multinational technology company Cisco will expand its metro Atlanta presence with a $41 million talent and collaboration center in the city’s Midtown that will create up to 700 jobs, Gov. Brian Kemp announced Wednesday.
Cisco, which already employs more than 1,000 Georgians, will set up shop in the Coda building in Midtown’s Tech Square.
“Cisco’s investment in the Peach State is a testament to the strong pipeline of talent our colleges and universities produce here,” Kemp said. “For the last two years, our capital city has ranked as the No. 1 Tech Hub by Business Facilities [magazine], and we continue to outpace the national average in both attracting and educating tech talent.”
The new talent and collaboration center is expected to open next year.
The company will be hiring in a variety of areas and skill sets, including engineering, customer experience and finance. Career opportunities will be available to students, those early in their careers and to more experienced professionals.
Individuals interested in opportunities with Cisco are encouraged to visit the company’s website for more information.
“We’re delighted to welcome Cisco to our neighborhood,” said Angel Cabrera, Georgia Tech’s president. “Tech Square has emerged as one of the most exciting innovation hubs in America — a meeting point for large tech companies and a thriving ecosystem of startups. … As a global leader, Cisco will not only benefit from this environment of innovation but will soon be a major contributor to it.”
The Georgia Department of Economic Development’s Global Commerce Division partnered with Fulton County, Invest Atlanta, the Metro Atlanta Chamber, the University System of Georgia, Georgia Tech, and Georgia Power to secure the Cisco expansion.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
The Arch on the campus of the University of Georgia in Athens
ATLANTA – The University System of Georgia Board of Regents Wednesday approved controversial changes in tenure policies at 25 of the system’s 26 colleges and universities despite opposition from many professors.
The changes will replace a tenure system that allows professors to be fired only for a specific cause following a thorough peer review process with a new system that permits professors to be dismissed if they fail to take corrective steps following two consecutive subpar reviews.
The changes in post-tenure review, which will apply to all system schools except Georgia Gwinnett College, stem from a working group formed in September of last year that reviewed the current policy and submitted recommendations to the regents in June.
“The goal of the changes they recommended is to support career development for all faculty as well as ensure accountability and continued strong performance from faculty members after they have achieved tenure,” the regents wrote in a prepared statement.
A key change in the new policy adds student success as a category to be evaluated along with teaching and research.
“Student success remains a top priority for the university system,” the regents wrote. “This process intends to strengthen that commitment among faculty throughout their career while also recognizing how faculty already deepen student learning and engagement through activities both inside and outside the classroom.”
But representatives of the system’s faculty warn the new tenure policy will make it easier to dismiss professors without due process. A report released by the working group found that 96% of professors who go through the tenure review process receive positive reviews.
Matthew Boedy, president of the Georgia Conference of the American Association of University Professors, said the policy appears aimed at research professors.
“The board thinks these people aren’t doing enough,” said Boedy, an associate professor at the University of North Georgia. “They’re giving us tenure in name only … to suggest that somehow we’re not pulling our weight.”
About 1,500 professors across the university system signed a petition opposing the changes ahead of Wednesday’s vote. The regents approved the changes without discussion.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Atlanta’s homicide rate during the coronavirus pandemic increased more than 50 other major American cities, according to a new survey by the personal finance website WalletHub.
WalletHub compared the 50 cities based on homicides per capita in the third quarters of this year, last year and 2019. Data from the study is also based in some cases on preliminary police department crime statistics.
Here are the top 10 cities with the most increases in homicide:
1. Atlanta 2. Memphis, Tenn. 3. Chicago 4. New Orleans 5. Baltimore 6. Indianapolis 7. (Tied) Washington, D.C. Detroit 9. Louisville, Ky. 10. Columbus, Ohio
“Crime does not go up or down for one single reason,” said Matthew Hale, a political science professor at Seton Hall University. “In many places, unemployment and under-employment may be causing more people to consider and commit illegal activity.
“In some places, more general uncertainty and fear caused by the pandemic is leading toward criminal activity. In other places, it may be police fear of doing their job because of the heightened scrutiny. Most likely, it is all of these factors coming together at once.”
“Public perception of police is largely dependent on an individual’s socialization with the law, experiences with crime, and interactions with the police,” said Bryanna Fox, a criminology professor at the University of South Florida. “As crime increases, more people are victimized and have interactions with police.
“If they feel that their cases and interactions are handled fairly, the process is transparent, and their voices are heard, their trust in police will likely improve. If individuals have been socialized to trust and rely on the police, they may expect more police presence to address crime, and their perceptions of police will also improve when they feel law enforcement is effectively reducing crime.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The University System of Georgia Board of Regents is expected to adopt changes in the tenure system Wednesday strongly opposed by many of the system’s faculty members.
“This is the death of tenure and due process in Georgia,” Matthew Boedy, president of the Georgia Conference of the American Association of University Professors, said Tuesday after the board’s Academic Affairs Committee unanimously approved the changes during a meeting on the campus of Georgia Tech and referred them to the full board for action. “They are removing faculty peer review and putting it in the hands of the administration.”
Faculty members at some university system campuses have run afoul with administrators in recent week over the system’s policy to make mask wearing in classrooms and other indoor spaces voluntary rather than mandatory. Individual teachers have vowed to impose mask mandates on students and staff inside their classrooms.
But Boedy said the dispute over tenure goes beyond concerns prompted by the coronavirus pandemic.
“COVID is an opportunity to do this,” he said. “[But] I don’t think it’s directly related.”
The dispute dates back to September of last year when then-system Chancellor Steve Wrigley formed a committee to examine policies for post-tenure review of faculty members at 25 of the 26 system campuses with tenure systems, all of the schools except Georgia Gwinnett College.
Surveys were sent to gather input from provosts at the 25 campuses and from faculty members and administrators with tenure.
The committee concluded that the current system gives peers a chance to review and comment on their colleagues’ performance and lets tenured faculty compare their performance with the goals they’ve set.
“On the less positive side, PTR (post-tenure review) has substantial direct and indirect costs in terms of faculty, staff, and administrator time,” the committee wrote in a report submitted to the regents last June.
“For some, the required documentation is perceived as onerous to compile. Finally, in the current form, very few low-performing faculty members are identified and remediated during the PTR process.”
According to the report, of 3,122 professors who went through post-tenure review, 3,005 – or 96% – received a positive review.
“They think it is too easy to get tenure and too easy to keep it,” Boedy said.
Boedy said the key change in the new policy would get rid of the current hearing process for professors who fail to get tenure and put decisions in the hands of a few administrators.
About 1,500 university system faculty members have signed a petition opposing the changes to post-tenure review.
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) also is vowing to launch an investigation if the regents adopted the changes.
“At most reputable institutions of higher education, tenured professors can be dismissed only for reasons related to professional fitness and only after a hearing before a faculty body,” AAUP President Irene Mulvey wrote in a prepared statement.
“In such a hearing, the administration must make its case that the faculty member’s conduct or performance warranted dismissal. The USG board-proposed policy unlinks this procedure, commonly referred to as academic due process, from post-tenure review, thereby undermining tenure and academic freedom.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
