September 18, 2025
Dear Members of the Sewanee Community,
On May 5, 2025, the University’s Board of Regents unanimously approved a statement titled “Heritage and Healing and Charting the Course Ahead,” continuing Sewanee’s ongoing efforts to engage thoughtfully and honestly with our past while advancing the values that define our present and future. The full statement is included below.
In this statement, the board affirms its support for the rigorous and thoughtful work of the Names and Places Committee, whose investigation of and report on the persons memorialized on our campus offered an opportunity to more fully and accurately tell the story of the University. As you will see from the statement, the board has committed Sewanee to a publicly accessible program of contextualization—one that adds depth, nuance, and truth to our understanding of our physical and institutional landscape. This effort is part of the University’s commitment to intellectual excellence, community, and grace in pursuit of its mission.
The board has also provided additional financial resources to support this work and has asked that they be provided regular updates as we move forward.
To that end, I am appointing a contextualization implementation working group that will be charged with exploring where and how contextual materials should appear, ensuring scholarly integrity and public accessibility, and recommending a timeline for progress.
The work ahead will require care, collaboration, and courage. Our work is not only about recognizing our history but also about telling our collective story in a way that strengthens the University’s foundation for the generations to come.
I look forward to sharing more with you in the future as the working group begins its efforts. Together, we will chart a course that embraces our full story and prepares Sewanee for a future rooted in truth and promise.
Sincerely,
Rob Pearigen
Vice-Chancellor and President
Statement by the Board of Regents
Heritage and Healing and Charting the Course Ahead
The leadership of the University of the South has long strived to make Sewanee a model of intellectual rigor and excellence as well as a place of community and grace in an America that welcomes all and embraces possibility.
The Board of Regents intends to continue to set the University on a positive and measured long-term course striving toward the fullest application of the University’s values.
The Board of Regents has received the report and recommendations of the Names and Places Committee, commissioned in the fall of 2020. Appreciating that their work was thorough and academically rigorous, the regents affirm that the committee’s work will help the University’s telling of its history—and that it provides an opportunity to advance the institution and support the educational interests of our students.
The work of the Names and Places Committee provides support for contextualizing challenging parts of our history so that we can move forward in a dynamic and vibrant way for our future and in service to the University’s strategic plan, “Elevating Mind, Heart and Place.” The Board of Regents strongly affirms an institutional commitment to a publicly accessible program of contextualization to more meaningfully represent our University’s story, rather than removal of names from places. To that end, the Board of Regents is providing additional resources to support the contextualization efforts and to advance the broader and important process of understanding and education, and invites the Vice-Chancellor and the administration to provide regular updates to the Board of Regents on action steps being taken.
The Board of Regents is committed to moving our community forward with a deep desire for charting Sewanee’s future course in a way that authentically tells its history, seeks healing, and draws upon its greatest strengths to serve its mission and purpose and to live into its values and promising future.
May 5, 2025 - Approved by the Board of Regents
