lit a candle 9 Sept 2026Ninety-eight and still showing up for Korea. Not many ambassadors keep the work going for thirty years after they leave office. That's conviction.
Their story
James Thomas Laney (24 December 1927 - 13 August 2026) was an American Methodist minister, Christian ethicist, university president, and diplomat whose life linked Arkansas and Memphis childhoods, Yale education, nearly eight decades of engagement with Korea, and the remaking of Emory University. He died at home in Atlanta at…
James Thomas Laney (24 December 1927 - 13 August 2026) was an American Methodist minister, Christian ethicist, university president, and diplomat whose life linked Arkansas and Memphis childhoods, Yale education, nearly eight decades of engagement with Korea, and the remaking of Emory University. He died at home in Atlanta at 98, beside his wife of 76 years, Berta Radford Laney. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported heart failure as the cause.
Born on Christmas Eve in Wilson, a small town in northeast Arkansas, Laney was shaped by a schoolteacher mother, a Methodist-minister grandfather, and a grandmother who pressed education. As a teenager he worked odd jobs in the Mississippi Delta. His family moved to Memphis in his junior year of high school. At Central High School he excelled in academics and football, met Berta, and won a scholarship to Yale College (entered 1946). Near the end of his sophomore year, at 19, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and served in the Counter Intelligence Corps in South Korea after World War II and the end of Japanese rule. Emory's memorial and United Methodist News both stress that Korea redirected him: he returned to Yale, finished a B.A. in economics in 1950, married Berta in December 1949, and chose ministry over business.
He studied at Yale Divinity School (degree 1954), served as chaplain at Choate while in seminary, was ordained in the Methodist Church, and pastored in Cincinnati (about 1955-1958). After Korean-language preparation he and Berta returned to Seoul in 1959 as Methodist missionary educators. Laney worked with the Korean Student Christian Council and Federation and taught religion at Yonsei University. Two of their five children were born in Seoul. Former World Methodist Council president Jong Chun Park later recalled Laney as a teacher who formed young Korean Christians who went on into church, society, and democratization. The family returned to the United States in 1964; Laney completed a Ph.D. in Christian ethics at Yale in two years (1966), taught at Vanderbilt Divinity School, and in 1969 became dean of Emory's Candler School of Theology, only the second Candler dean not drawn from its own faculty.
As Candler dean (1969-1977) he grew the faculty by nearly half in four years, appointed Grant Shockley (first African American full-time faculty member), Peggy Billings (early female faculty appointment in religion and society), and others; launched a supervised contextual ministry program that became a national model; and, after a bidding contest, secured Hartford Theological Seminary's library collection for about $1.75 million, making Pitts Theology Library overnight one of North America's largest. Enrollment rose sharply; by the mid-1970s Candler ranked among the top U.S. theology schools.
Trustees named him Emory's 17th president effective 1 September 1977. In 1979 Robert W. Woodruff and brother George gave Emory about $105 million in Coca-Cola stock, then the largest philanthropic gift to an American university. Laney negotiated an unrestricted university-directed gift and pledged a "quantum jump" toward greatness. Endowment roughly doubled; Woodruff Scholars and professorships followed; a school of public health and ambitious building (including Cannon Chapel) took shape; research expectations rose; Emory College selectivity tightened. Laney recruited star faculty and, after Jimmy Carter left the White House, brought Carter to Emory as University Distinguished Professor (1982), anchoring a lasting Emory-Carter Center partnership. Benno Schmidt, former Yale president, later told the AJC that no peer had improved a university more during a tenure than Laney. Emory entered the Association of American Universities not long after he left the presidency.
In October 1993 President Bill Clinton appointed him U.S. ambassador to South Korea. He presented credentials on 2 November 1993 (State Department and Wikipedia). North Korea's nuclear crisis in 1994 brought the peninsula near war; Laney worked with Clinton and Carter toward the 1994 Agreed Framework. He was known for Korean fluency and for speeches delivered in Korean. Wikipedia's officeholder box ends his ambassadorship 5 February 1996; Emory and family obituaries describe return to Atlanta by 1997 and continued Asia envoy and Korea task-force work. From 1997 to 2003 he co-chaired the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Korea. Korean scholar Stephen W. Linton told The New York Times history would see him as "the first ambassador to the whole peninsula."
In retirement he remained a Carter Center trustee, Luce Foundation board member, chair of the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, and a past director of The Coca-Cola Company and SunTrust. Emory renamed its graduate school the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies (2009). Candler established the James T. and Berta R. Laney Chair in Moral Leadership (2014). He received the Korea Society's Van Fleet Award (1996), Yale's Wilbur L. Cross Medal (1996), the World Methodist Peace Award (2019), and the Pacific Century Institute's Building Bridges Award (2026), among more than twenty honorary degrees. A Service of Death and Resurrection was held 21 August 2026 at Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church on Emory's campus.
This memorial is for James Thomas Laney (1927-2026), Emory University president and U.S. ambassador to South Korea under President Bill Clinton. It is not for other people named Jim or James Laney.
Biography adapted from Wikipedia; Emory News; Emory President message; A.S. Turner obituary; AJC; CBS Atlanta; UM News; Korea Society; State Dept Historian; Commons PD-USGov.
In their own words
“We are embarking on a journey to make Emory one of the principal universities in this country, one of society's unassailably distinctive resources.”
State of Emory address, 1979 (Emory News memorial).
“Peacemaking is the actual activity of making peace happen.”
Roundtable for Peace on the Korean Peninsula, Carter Center, 2018 (United Methodist News).
“Emory's decision to name the graduate school for me is the greatest honor of my life. From the very first, Emory has been in my heart.”
On the 2009 renaming of Emory's graduate school (Emory News).
“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.”
Emory Sesquicentennial address, 1986 (Emory News).
Photos
2James T. Laney as U.S. ambassador (State Magazine portrait crop).
by People Forever
Laney presenting Superior Honor Award, U.S. Embassy Seoul (State Magazine).
by People Forever
Yes. The world got smaller when he died.