On a dark day in April 2020, he received the news. Sheltering in place due to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) precautions, archaeologist Steve Ortiz, a tenured faculty member at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SWBTS) and Director of the Tel Gezer Excavation Project, was terminated from his position at the seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. A loophole at SWBTS allows a tenured faculty member to be dismissed if his entire department is eliminated for financial reasons. At the direction of the new president, Adam W. Greenway, and citing the financial hardship created by the COVID-19 pandemic, SWBTS cut funding […]
