The flagship seminary of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) made history last week when trustees voted to name Dr. Charisse Gillett, the 17th president of the Lexington Theological Seminary (LTS). She will be the first Black and the first woman to lead the 146-year-old, Lexington, Ky.-based institution.
The announcement comes amid considerable turmoil at the seminary in recent years. The school had to seek court permission to dip into its endowment to cover operating expenses in 2009 and then fired tenured faculty members to save money.
But the firings of tenured faculty resulted in a pair of lawsuits alleging breach of contract: one from a Jewish professor, Larry Kant, and the other from the first and only Black tenured professor in the school’s history, Dr. Jimmy Kirby, who earned his doctorate of theology in social ethics and Christian education from Boston University and joined LTS in 1994 as an assistant professor of church and society.
Amos Jones, a law professor and Washington, D.C.-based employment litigator representing Kirby, reacted dryly to the news that LTS had made history. “While it might appear gratifying that the defendant seminary has elevated a Black woman to its helm, it is not lost on the public that they flagrantly discriminated against and breached their contract with Dr. Kirby, who was 65 at the time,” he said.
Jones noted that he filed a reply brief with the court only two days before Gillett’s elevation citing a 1979 case when LTS went to the Kentucky Court of Appeals on an argument they have advanced in the current litigation and lost.
“It’s pathetic that they are trying to overturn 32 years of good law as they continue fighting this outstanding Black professor, their only one for all those years,” Jones said. “As long as LTS power brokers flagrantly assert a perceived right to breach contracts and discriminate with impunity because they are the church and believe themselves to be above every civil law of the land, Dr. Gillett had better watch her back.”
Rick Griffith, an attorney for LTS and an LTS trustee, did not return repeated calls seeking comment on the litigation and Gillett’s appointment.
