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Columbia Theological Seminary
The Reverend Samuel White, the admissions director at the Columbia Theological Seminary, has been fired, and Black students are protesting, Religion News Service reported.
Black students at the Presbyterian Church seminary in Decatur, Ga., say they are stunned by the surprise firing of a “beloved” admissions director, saying it’s the latest in a series of firings of faculty members and administrators of color since 2019.
On Tuesday, as most faculty, staff and students had left campus for the summer, they received an email from President Leanne Van Dyk telling them that it was White’s last day.
The following day, the seminary’s African Heritage Student Association published a letter addressed to the president and Board of Trustees expressing “deep sadness and tremendous frustration” over the incident and asserting that Van Dyk’s tenure “has been defined by racial injustice.”
The letter demands that the president, who is scheduled to leave her post in five weeks, resign immediately; that the board president resign; that White be reinstated; and that a new advisory board be appointed to oversee personnel changes.
White’s tenure as director of admissions, the students wrote, “resulted in the recruitment of one of the largest incoming classes in recent history, and the most diverse incoming class in the school’s history. Without fail, Rev. White is committed to ensuring that the seminary upholds the values and ethics it professes around justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
White did not respond to a request for comment.
In an email to Religion News Service, Jennifer Cuthbertson, the seminary’s director of marketing and communications, declined to say why White had been fired. “Columbia Theological Seminary is sensitive to students concerns over the departure of Rev. Samuel White,” Cuthbertson wrote. “However, it was a carefully considered decision and out of respect for the privacy of all current and former employees and consistent with our policies, we do not comment on personnel matters.”
