Correspondence with UTS President Henry Sloane Coffin
Union Theological Seminary
Broadway at 120th Street
New York
President's Room
December 2, 1929
Professor Reinhold Niebuhr
Union Theological Seminary
My dear Dr. Niebuhr:
Dean Weigle came to me and asked me whether I had any objection to his offering you a Chair of Christian Ethics at Yale. I told him certainly not. I thanked him for his frankness in coming to me and told him that I was going to be equally frank in saying that I would do my utmost to prevent you from leaving us.
I write this letter merely to ask you not to do anything without coming to see me. I shall have, I trust, a definite proposition to make to you but it may be some weeks be- fore I can make it officially as the Board does not meet until January.
Meanwhile let me say, what you certainly must know, that we all here consider your work a brilliant contribu- tion to the Seminary and, what is more, that we know that you have added to the spiritual vitality of the institution. For all this we love you and want you to stay with us.
Faithfully yours,
Henry Sloane Coffin
Reinhold Niebuhr Papers: Library of Congress, Manuscript Reading Room
