Remembering Emory President Emeritus James T. Laney
1927-2026
Remembering Emory President Emeritus James T. Laney
1927-2026
The year was 1977, and Emory was poised to choose a new president.
Despite that exciting prospect, both nationally and close to home there were discouraging signs. Competition for top applicants was becoming more fierce and federal research funds for faculty were declining. And there were a handful of problems unique to Emory, including how the university could become more than a pre-professional college attracting students largely on the strength of its career-oriented schools.
The person the trustees chose to navigate these challenges was James T. Laney, who became Emory’s 17th president when he came over from the university’s Candler School of Theology, where he was serving as dean.
Laney was young for a university president at age 49, but by the time he stepped down in 1993, he was credited with overseeing the most significant transformation in Emory’s history — from regional teaching university to major national research university.
He passed away Aug. 13, 2026, at age 98, leaving generations of students, faculty and staff who will mourn his death and celebrate his legacy.
In 1979, two years into Laney’s tenure as president of the university, Emory received a landmark gift of $105 million from Robert W. Woodruff and his brother, George. At the time, it was the largest philanthropic investment ever made in an American university.
Pledging that the Woodruffs’ generosity would be used “to ensure quality and greatness,” Laney committed his presidency to help Emory “make a quantum jump — to become one of the great universities of the world.”
By the time he left Emory to become U.S. ambassador to South Korea, Laney was credited with recruiting star faculty members such as President Jimmy Carter, biographer and literary critic Richard Ellmann, law professor Harold Berman, and conductor Robert Shaw; creating a program of merit scholarships and other student aid to attract the brightest students from across the globe; significantly elevating the quality of student life; launching a new school of public health and other academic programs; and starting an ambitious building program.
Carrying the title of “president emeritus” with honor, he remained a champion of the university for the rest of his life.
“President Laney was a powerful force for change, elevating our university and building for what we are today,” Emory University Interim President Leah Ward Sears and President-Elect Christopher L. Augostini wrote in a community message.
“His legacy will live on through the James T. and Berta R. Laney Chair in Moral Leadership at Candler School of Theology, the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies, across every corner of our campuses, and through the countless lives he transformed.”
“We are embarking on a journey to make Emory one of the principal universities in this country, one of society’s unassailably distinctive resources.”
— “The State of Emory University” address by President James T. Laney, 1979
Early influences and education
Born in Arkansas and reared in Memphis, Tennessee, Laney was drawn to his maternal grandfather, a Methodist minister who, according to the book “Religion and Reason Joined: Candler at One Hundred” by Emory historian emeritus Gary S. Hauk, “shaped both Laney’s commitment to the church and his intellectual hunger.”
Laney won a scholarship to Yale College, where he majored in economics; however, his undergraduate career was interrupted by the draft and service in the Army Counter-Intelligence Corps in Korea before the outbreak of the Korean War.
F. Stuart Gulley, author of “The Academic President as Moral Leader: James T. Laney at Emory University, 1977–1993,” notes that “the tour in Korea influenced him in many ways, giving him lifelong friends, a deep love and appreciation for the language and culture, and a desire to return someday, perhaps as a missionary.”
Following military service, Laney returned to Yale, finishing his degree in 1950 and then earning a bachelor of divinity. The through-line of his study at Yale, says Gulley, was that it instilled “a firm commitment to the importance of liberal arts study that would be a hallmark of his leadership at Emory.” For three years following graduation from divinity school, Laney served as a minister in Cincinnati.
Affection for the Korean people drew him back to the peninsula. Now married, with three children (two more would be born in Korea), Laney served as a Methodist missionary, providing leadership to the Korean Student Christian Council and serving as associate professor of religion at Yonsei University in Seoul — an experience that would, in his words, “change my thinking about the world.”
After five years abroad, his sights firmly set on a career as an educator, Laney was ready to earn his PhD and, as the father of a growing family, wanted to do so as soon as possible. Though he had been accepted at Cambridge University, he chose Yale’s program in Christian ethics, pronouncing it “more efficient.” True to his goal, he finished his PhD in just two years.
In 1966, Laney accepted a post as assistant professor of Christian ethics and director of Methodist studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School while also serving Pegram Methodist Church.
James Laney as a young man
James Laney as a young man
‘Remarkable impact’ as Candler dean
Just three years later, Laney became dean of Emory’s Candler School of Theology. He was only the second dean in the school’s history not drawn from the Candler faculty.
James L. Waits is professor emeritus of practical theology at Candler and was friends with Laney for 50 years. A month after Laney arrived, Waits answered his call to serve as assistant dean, then served as Candler’s dean from 1978 to 1991. “It was clear that Jim had a vision far beyond what Candler was at the time,” he says.
Laney grew the Candler faculty by nearly 50% in the first four years. More important, he augmented its reputation with appointments such as Grant Shockley, the first African American to serve full-time on the faculty; and E. Brooks Holifield, who became the second clergy member of the Emory faculty to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Laney also brought on the first female faculty member, Peggy Billings, who taught religion and society.
Under Laney, a “supervised ministry” program, now known as contextual education, was established as the first of its kind in the country. Though the program has been modified since its establishment, it continues to be a national model for the training of clergy.
Another milestone came with the purchase of a collection of nearly a quarter-million volumes from Hartford Theological Seminary Library in 1975–76. It took a bidding war with the Billy Graham Association before the sale to Emory could be secured for $1.75 million. Overnight, Pitts became the second-largest theological library in North America. According to Hauk, the deal gave Candler “academic cachet it had never experienced before.”
During Laney’s tenure as dean, enrollment grew 37%, making Candler the largest United Methodist seminary in the world. In 1975, two years before Laney left, Change magazine declared Candler the nation’s sixth-best theology school. Never before were any of Emory’s schools ranked in the top 25 nationally.
“Jim Laney’s vision and ambition for faculty excellence had a remarkable impact,” says Jan Love, dean of Candler School of Theology from 2007–2024 and now dean emerita and professor emerita of Christianity and world politics.
“He built on a solid foundation but took Candler to new heights, hiring professors who defined the cutting edges of their fields and nurturing a scholarly culture in which faculty reveled in the challenge of research, writing and leading their guilds,” she notes. “Jim advocated educating students to be moral leaders by enlarging the mind and the heart — shaping character, being a person fully alive, nurturing integrity, intellect and wisdom, and calling all to servant leadership for the common good.”
The dean becomes president
During his time as Candler’s dean, Laney developed a close relationship with Robert Woodruff, arguably the most influential Atlantan of that time, and was serving as his chaplain.
As then-President Sanford Atwood’s replacement was being contemplated and Laney’s candidacy considered, it didn’t hurt to have Woodruff in his corner. In fact, Woodruff contacted trustee chair Henry Bowden to say: “It is the general practice of business corporations, of course, to promote from within their organizations when a qualified candidate for a higher position is identifiable. … [Dr. Laney’s] attainments both before and since coming to Emory are impressive and I hope you will acquaint yourself with his truly outstanding record.”
The trustees were persuaded, and Laney took the helm as Emory’s president on Sept. 1, 1977.
Waits acknowledges, “I knew [his promotion] would be a loss [for Candler], but I saw it as highly appropriate for a clergyman and ethicist to be president of Emory.” However, the fact that Waits viewed Laney as “a pastor at heart” did not mean “that he was a pushover and not tough.” In fact, says Waits, “When Jim became president, I found out very quickly that he was sitting on the other side of a big desk.”
Given Laney’s resolve to make Emory “one of the principal universities in this country,” several key components were needed, including solid research, a top faculty and the best students. Recognizing the resources that would take, the trustees approved Laney’s recommendation for a five-year, $160 million Campaign for Emory.
The brothers Woodruff liked what they saw in this president, who demonstrated both vision and administrative acumen. At the time of their gift, George Woodruff, a trustee emeritus, read a letter from Robert that described being “gratified by Emory’s progress, its demonstrated capacity to manage its affairs and its continued commitment to excellence and service to society.”
The medical school had been the Woodruffs’ principal interest to that time, but Laney wisely negotiated to make the gift both unrestricted and directed to the university.
Thrust squarely into the national spotlight as a result, Emory saw its endowment double. As Laney noted, “The endowment made it possible to begin long-range planning and serious building in a way that was almost unprecedented, certainly at Emory.”
Inviting the “vigorous participation” of faculty in the work ahead, Laney saw a need for full-tuition scholarships and endowed faculty positions — all of which would, understandably, bear the name Woodruff. Before 1979, Emory College of Arts and Sciences offered only 23 merit scholarships, each worth no more than $500.
The Woodruff Scholars would be “selected solely on merit, with leadership potential, academic ability and character as the chief criteria for selection and the aim of developing leaders to serve Georgia, the South and the nation.” In fall 1981, 12 students enrolled in Emory College as Woodruff Scholars. Since then, nearly 3,000 students have been part of that legacy, and the program has expanded to include fellowships in every school of the university.
Moving into Lullwater, the traditional home of Emory presidents, with wife, Berta, and children in 1977.
Moving into Lullwater, the traditional home of Emory presidents, with wife, Berta, and children in 1977.
Serving meals to show appreciation for Emory employees on Staff Day in 1979
Serving meals to show appreciation for Emory employees on Staff Day in 1979
“We have inherited an expectation that those who have the privilege of coming here to receive an education carry with it a corresponding obligation to society — an obligation not just to do well, but to do good, an obligation to integrate the mind and the heart.”
— President James Laney, Emory Sesquicentennial address, 1986
Building Emory’s faculty
Another fortuitous event occurred in 1979 when Laney extended U.S. President Jimmy Carter an invitation to break ground for Cannon Chapel and receive an honorary degree. The mood was jubilant, having a sitting U.S. president on campus.
When Carter’s presidential term ended in 1981, he sought a university affiliation close to home. Carter attracted the interest of many leading higher education institutions, so Laney lost no time in meeting with him. Laney assured Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, that “he had a moral and ethical vision for the university that they could share and help to advance.” In turn, Carter presented his vision of an “action-oriented” policy research center to advance peace and health worldwide.
“It was obvious to me that [Jimmy] Carter should be allied with Emory both as a professor and through the yet-to-be Carter Center. From its beginning, Emory had been built on academic rigor and moral inquiry.”
—President Emeritus James T. Laney
This promise on Laney’s part held enormous importance for Carter, who recalled: “I wanted the unrestricted ability to speak to the students in a very frank and unrestrained way on controversial issues of the times, and I felt Emory would give me that opportunity.”
Carter joined the faculty as University Distinguished Professor in April 1982. A 1987 issue of Newsweek on Campus, whose lead story was “superstar faculty,” had President Carter on its cover walking through campus surrounded by students and the press.
President Carter and President Laney after a breakfast at Emory's Houston Mill House in 1983
President Carter and President Laney after a breakfast at Emory's Houston Mill House in 1983
With Carter’s arrival, there was now no longer a need to say “Emory University in Atlanta” to identify the university — a four-word phrase that Laney thought should be shortened to one. Now it could be just be “Emory.”
And so began more than 40-year partnership between Emory and The Carter Center that has fostered an extraordinary community of scholarship and practice whose impact across the world has advanced peace and improved health.
James Laney looks on as President Jimmy Carter breaks ground for Emory's Cannon Chapel in 1979.
James Laney looks on as President Jimmy Carter breaks ground for Emory's Cannon Chapel in 1979.
With President Carter greeting students on campus in 1981
With President Carter greeting students on campus in 1981
Enhancing graduate education
Even with so much wind at its back, Laney felt the university was not making as much progress as he hoped. In an address to faculty in 1982, Laney stressed that no university can become great without a great graduate school. In Laney’s view, the college would have to establish a respected liberal arts program to pave the way for a stronger graduate school.
At the time, Emory College was accepting 90% of its applicants. Teaching loads were too high, grants too low. But with Laney pulling all the relevant levers, Emory’s advance as a national research university began in earnest around 1984.
The establishment of the Robert W. Woodruff Professorships helped attract a higher caliber of faculty at all levels, as did new tenure guidelines, which put faculty on notice that research and publication now would be valued equally with teaching.
With Archbishop Desmund Tutu, who served as a Woodruff Visiting Professor in 1999
With Archbishop Desmund Tutu, who served as a Woodruff Visiting Professor in 1999
Jon P. Gunnemann, emeritus professor of social ethics, was one such highly-sought-after hire. He would face the daunting task of coming after Laney to supply expertise in ethics at Candler.
Gunnemann remembers being ushered into Laney’s office during the interview process: “Jim offered a warm smile and a firm handshake but no small talk. His question to me was direct: ‘Is there anything that would prevent you from coming?’”
Having followed Laney’s career since 1965, Gunnemann had been impressed with the “adept administration and unbelievable gift for fundraising” he had demonstrated at Emory. Moreover, Laney exuded energy and vision. He was clearly not presiding over a university that was “old and self-satisfied,” Gunnemann says.
“Too often,” he continues, “seminaries have to prove themselves. At Emory, we had support right from the top, which made an enormous difference. Jim had a marvelous capacity to work with people and get them to invest in Emory.”
And he was bold. In spring 1990, Emory raided Johns Hopkins University’s top-rated French department, which included the top three senior faculty members as well as 10 graduate students. According to The New York Times, “The moves … helped Emory vault overnight into the front rank of American universities in French literature studies. They also inscribed a kind of exclamation point after a stretch of ambitious growth at Emory.”
Concerned always for intellectual and moral community at Emory, Laney established the Luce Seminars and recruited the internationally respected theological ethicist James M. Gustafson to lead them.
Groundbreaking in their interdisciplinarity, they became a model for other universities and helped “create a synergistic quality, an interdisciplinary aspect, in the hopes of answering what education is truly for in the best sense,” said Laney. According to many participants, the seminars also had a lasting impact on the scholarship and teaching of many of Emory’s own most productive faculty members.
In 1987, Laney had laid out a comprehensive strategic vision for Emory titled “Emory 2000.” According to Lisa Tedesco, dean emerita of the graduate school, “It was a transformation of the very identity of Emory.”
By 1993, most of the goals he articulated had been met, but there was one that still seemed to him only partially realized: the dedication to service that he considered the very heart of what Emory symbolizes.
As he told the Emory Board of Visitors that year: “We are created to serve. If we do not care for something larger than ourselves and do it with a sense of heart, then we ourselves shrivel up. Society, the larger good itself, atrophies. The sense of service and the sense of ambition are twin aspects of education that we must take into account.”
Service on the world stage
Perhaps taking his own advice and acknowledging that the work he had set out to do at Emory was largely done, Laney was open to the idea when President Bill Clinton approached him to become the U.S. ambassador to South Korea.
Following an exhaustive CIA background check and a U.S. Senate hearing, Laney was confirmed and resigned from the Emory presidency in October 1993. Laney had signed on as ambassador at a fraught moment, when North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. In 1994, tensions with North Korea escalated dangerously, but Laney skillfully worked with Presidents Clinton and Carter to avoid conflict.
Two years after Laney stepped down, Emory was admitted to the Association of American Universities, founded in 1900 and now consisting of the nation’s 71 leading research universities. It was a marker that Laney had in view for a number of years and one certainly made possible by what he helped Emory accomplish.
In an article published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on July 4, 1993, titled “Laney a stellar choice as Seoul envoy,” he received this high compliment from a well-placed peer. Benno Schmidt, former president of Yale University, said: “It will be the consensus view that no university president presided over a university so improved during his tenure as Jim Laney.”
He returned to the U.S. in 1997, serving as special presidential envoy in Asia. From 1997–2003, he co-chaired the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Korea. Korean scholar Stephen W. Linton told The New York Times, “I think history will see [Laney] as the first ambassador to the whole peninsula.”
Berta and James Laney celebrating grandson Johnson Thomas “JT” Laney's graduation from Emory's Oxford College in 2011. Several of the couple's children and grandchildren are Emory alumni.
Berta and James Laney celebrating grandson Johnson Thomas “JT” Laney's graduation from Emory's Oxford College in 2011. Several of the couple's children and grandchildren are Emory alumni.
Once back in Atlanta, Laney was always willing to reengage with the university in whatever way was needed. Emory expressed its gratitude to its dynamic 17th president by, in 2009, renaming the graduate school the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies.
“Emory’s decision to name the graduate school for me is the greatest honor of my life,” Laney said at the time. “From the very first, Emory has been in my heart, and I am deeply touched and humbled to always be associated with the university in such a special way.”
President Laney speaking at the dedication of The Carter Center in 1986, with former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan
President Laney speaking at the dedication of The Carter Center in 1986, with former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan
With Mikhail Gorbachev, former leader of the Soviet Union, and Jimmy Carter. Gorbachev was Emory's 1992 Commencement speaker and received an honorary degree from the university.
With Mikhail Gorbachev, former leader of the Soviet Union, and Jimmy Carter. Gorbachev was Emory's 1992 Commencement speaker and received an honorary degree from the university.
Honors
The following are just a few of the awards bestowed upon James Laney by Emory and other grateful institutions around the world:
1992
Emory Medal
22 HONORARY DEGREES
from colleges and universities in the U.S., Great Britain, Japan, Korea and Africa, including Emory in 1994
1996
Wilbur L. Cross Medal from Yale University, given for “distinguished achievements in scholarship, teaching, academic administration and public service”
1996
General James Van Fleet Award from the Korea Society
2009
Emory’s graduate school renamed the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies
2013
Yonsei University created the James T. Laney Chair Professorship
2014
The Laney Program in Moral Leadership was established at Candler School of Theology
2014
Candler School of Theology Centennial Medal, awarded to 56 individuals who demonstrate “the highest standards of intellectual inquiry, devotion to the Christian tradition, passion for social justice, an egalitarian spirit, and a commitment to practices of transformation”
2019
World Methodist Peace Award, awarded by the World Methodist Council, given for Laney’s work for peace on the Korean Peninsula
2026
Building Bridges Award, given by the Pacific Century Institute, recognizing his decades of leadership in U.S.–Korea relations
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Sources for this story include Emory University archives, interviews, “The Academic President as Moral Leader: James T. Laney at Emory University, 1977–1993” by F. Stuart Gulley and “Religion and Reason Joined: Candler at One Hundred” by Gary S. Hauk.
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