www.union.edu/Presidents/
Thirteenth president of Union College, March 1, 1946–January 31, 1965
Harry Carter Davidson (he dropped the Harry early in his career) was born to a highly respected professional family in Louisville on September 23, 1905. He studied in local schools and entered Harvard College at sixteen and took his BA (1925) after only three years. He earned an AM from the University of Louisville in the following year while teaching at his former high school, then served for two years as assistant professor of English at the University of Idaho before entering the University of Chicago graduate school in 1928. With a PhD in English from Chicago (1930) he joined the faculty of Carleton College in 1931.
In 1936, at thirty-one, he was appointed president of Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, and institution founded by Union graduate George Washington Gale, Class of 1814. When Knox celebrated its centenary the following year, the principle address was delivered by Union president Dixon Ryan Fox, on whom Davidson bestowed an honorary degree. During his ten years at Knox, Davidson made a favorable impression on many, including some Union College trustees. Consequently, when Fox died suddenly in January 1945, Davidson was chosen to succeed him.
Within six months, enrollment at the college had been doubled by the influx of returning veterans, and it continued to rise until 1950. Between his arrival and the opening of classes in early September, Davidson recruited fifty new faculty members, most of them through his own searches and interviews. Even sooner, he had to resolve the problem of housing the returning veterans and the expanding faculty. Through the tempestuous crowding and the inevitable complaints, Davidson moved with cautious efficiency as a result of which Union survived the wrenching changes with few scars, a stronger and better college than it had been.
From the beginning Davidson was a mover and shaper of higher education in New York State and beyond. Shortly after his arrival in Schenectady, he and other presidents met with Governor Dewey to lay plans for absorbing the flood of new students throughout the state; the several new colleges created to meet this need were later absorbed into the State University of New York. Davidson was named first chairman of the Empire State Foundation of Independent Liberal Arts Colleges in 1952.
During Davidson’s first ten years at Union, the endowment rose from $5,000,000 to $19,500,000, largely owing to shrewd investments and personal gifts and bequests on the part of Frank Bailey, long-time Treasurer of the College, who died in 1953. During that boom decade, Davidson oversaw the completion of two major buildings— West College Dormitory and Dining Hall (1950) and the Field House (1955)—and several smaller projects. He proved a successful fund raiser on his own for specific projects, like the Memorial Field House and Schaffer Library (1961). By the time his term ended he had also built Richmond House (1960). The plans for the Humanities Building and Social Sciences Building (1967) as well as the dormitories eventually named Fox House and Davidson House (1967), were conceived during his tenure.
What makes a good college is ultimately not its buildings but its faculty and student body. Davidson sought out faculty members with high academic credentials, insisting on doctorates wherever possible and on sound teaching experience at other institutions. He claimed with pride that he had chosen some of the best faculty in America, and he was reluctant to impose his own pedagogical views on them, though he could do so if he felt it was important enough.
That the faculty became strong so early was in large measure the result of Davidson's enlightened policies. At a time when many colleges were slow to recognize the changing nature of academic needs, he persuaded the trustees to finance regular sabbatical leaves (a practice that had become almost forgotten at Union) and to provide generous benefits through the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association and the College Equities Retirement Fund, and he arranged for the College to guarantee total disability benefits—all significant in attracting a strong faculty.
Davidson did not demand of his faculty that they be scholars. He wanted teachers, and his general estimate of a faculty member was determined largely by how well he inspired his students. He disapproved of the policy of 'publish or perish'; whether the intellectual level of the College was raised when more emphasis was later given to research and publication is an open question. Davidson also placed a heavy emphasis on community involvement, encouraging the faculty to participate in civic affairs, though he was not always happy with those who sought office, especially since most chose to run on the Democratic ticket.
Davidson's relationship with the Board of Trustees was not always easy. In his struggles with Bailey, Chairman Walter Baker was, as we have seen, a staunch ally, but by 1960 Baker was pressuring an apparently reluctant president to proceed with the re-organization of his administration, to delegate more responsibility, and to exert 'more leadership in certain areas,' including revamping the curriculum. After Baker's retirement in 1963, some of the newer trustees saw a need for a different kind of president. When they complained to Davidson that he was spending too little time on campus matters and too much on outside committees, he must have seen the handwriting on the wall.
The decisive moment seems to have occurred at the October 1963 Faculty Council meeting. Davidson had for some time been trying to persuade the faculty to adopt a new calendar, but as chairman of the Faculty Council he declined to cast the tie-breaking vote that would have put his calendar into effect. To his admirers, that was gratifying evidence of his belief in consensus; to his critics on the board, it showed that Union needed a stronger leader. Nine months later he submitted his resignation, effective February 1965.
He explained his resignation partly in terms of his health, observing that many college presidents had died young from the stress of their jobs. But it was too late. A few months after he began his new job as president of the Association of American Colleges, he died suddenly on a street corner in Washington while waiting for a bus.
Meade Brunet served as Acting President from February 1965 until June 1965.
Condensed from Wayne Somers, compiler and editor, Encyclopedia of Union College History (Schenectady: Union College Press, 2003), page 215.
Image courtesy of Union College, Schaffer Library Special Collections and Archives, Photograph Collection