Report: Sewanee president to be nominated as ambassador to South Africa

Reuben Brigety II, the president of Sewanee in Monteagle, is being nominated to serve as U.S. ambassador to South Africa, according to SABC News.

Brigety is a former U.S. ambassador to the African Union and served as dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University before being named the first black president of Sewanee in 2020. The school is also known as the University of the South.

Brigety in February spoke out against repeated vandalism and threatening messages left at his home at the school. He had received pushback from students for imposing strict COVID-19 mitigation efforts and for clamping down on alcohol and drug use on campus.

The university’s board of regents last year issued a statement acknowledging the school “was long entangled with, and played a role in, slavery, racial segregation, and white supremacy—forces that found particular and painful expression in the Confederacy and, later, in the ‘Lost Cause’ mythology of the white South.”