M. Christopher Brown resigned his position as the 18th president of Kentucky State University. He was contracted to serve as president through 2025. The resignation comes on the heels of a state-ordered independent audit of the university’s finances.
Dr. Brown was named president of the university in 2017. Earlier, he was provost and executive vice president for academic affairs for the Southern University System in Louisiana. He is the former president of Alcorn State University in Mississippi. He stepped down from that position in December 2013. Earlier in his career, Dr. Brown was provost at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and dean of education at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Dr. Brown is a graduate of South Carolina State University, where he majored in elementary education. He holds a master’s degree in education from the University of Kentucky and a Ph.D. in higher education from Pennsylvania State University.
The university’s board of regents named Clara Ross Stamps, Kentucky State’s senior vice president for brand identity and university relations, as acting president. She joined the staff at the university in 2017.
“As the Kentucky State University community comes together, with a renewed appreciation for our collegiate campus atmosphere and a commitment to our core mission and values, I am humbled and energized by the opportunity to serve our students and community following what has certainly been a time of unprecedented change. I pledge to labor with our faculty, staff, alumni, and supporters, and will be accessible, transparent, accountable, and communicative, so together we can positively impact the lives of our students and society while advancing Kentucky State onward and upward,” said acting president Stamps.
Stamps is a graduate of Mississippi College. She is pursuing an educational doctorate at Morehead State University in adult and higher educational leadership with an emphasis in governance and policy studies.
The neoliberal, boule card carrying, and politically correct KSU Board of Regents should be duly ashamed for creating an environment which compelled Brown to resign in lieu of the accomplishments during his short tenure. What I seriously question is the current interim president(Ross Stamps) whose not qualified from a purely administrative levels. I would venture in saying that Ross Stamps has failed in getting out the KSU brand from a statewide, regional, and certainly national standpoint. For those who dissent, I challenge you to ask the average native born Black American high school student have you ever heard of Kentucky State University? Most of you already know the answer.
In fact, how can so-called Black Americans pontificate about the merits of Black Reparations when continue to have perpetual problems operating our beloved HBCUs.
It appears that Kentucky State University is operating in the capacity of a higher education colony within the Commonwealth of Kentucky in the 21st century.