Reuben E. Brigety II resigned his post as a vice chancellor at Sewanee University in Tennessee this past December, amid reports that he was under consideration for a U.S. ambassadorship by President Joe Biden.
Pres. Biden did submit Brigety's nomination for U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of South Africa to the U.S. Senate on Feb. 10, according to the Congressional Record (CR). The nomination was sent to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the CR recorded at the time. Brigety served from 2014 to 2015 as U.S. ambassador to the African Union under President Barack Obama.
Episcopal News Service reported Dec. 1 that Brigety had explained his departure in a letter to the Sewanee community. In the letter, Brigety wrote that since he had decided to accept the nomination if offered, "it would be unfair to prolong any uncertainty at the university." Brigety resigned his position as vice-chancellor and president of the University of the South, known as Sewanee, on Dec. 21, ENS reported.
Brigety, Sewanee's first Black vice-chancellor in the university's 163-year history, served from June 2020 to Dec. 20201, ENS reports. Brigety, a native of Jacksonville, Fla., joined Sewanee at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and nationwide protests against racial injustice, "particularly over violence against African Americans by police and white vigilantes," ENS reported.
Sewanee, owned and overseen by 28 Episcopal dioceses in the southeaster United States, has confronted its own history as having been founded to serve white slaveholders in the South and support of segregation in the Jim Crow era, ENS reports.
"Brigety encouraged Sewanee’s ongoing reexamination of its history while supporting university leaders in their rejection of the school’s past veneration of racist systems," ENS states in its report.
In September, Sewanee's board issued a formal statement “categorically rejecting" the institution's racist history; Brigety called the actions "‘a pivotal moment in the life of the University of the South" in a letter written at the time of the statement, ENS reported.
Despite the university's statement, issues of racial intolerance persist at the university, ENS reports. In an interview with ENS, Brigety stated his family's on-campus home had been attacked during a February worship service by who had left liquor bottles, trash and threatening signs in the lawn. University officials are investigating an incident at a March lacrosse match involving some students shouting racial slurs at the opposing team, behavior Brigety called "inexcusable," ENS reported.
At the time of his resignation, Brigety told ESN that while it had been his intention to remain at Sewanee "for a long time to come," he felt an "obligation to serve my country if asked by the President of the United States."
