David Brion Davis

Sterling Professor of History

David Brion DavisDavid Brion Davis, Sterling Professor of History, A.B. Dartmouth College, Ph.D. Harvard University, faculty member at Dartmouth College and Cornell University and at Yale since 1969: you are, quite simply, one of the pre-eminent historians of your generation, with no one surpassing your influence in the areas of slavery and antislavery history and few your equal in U.S. cultural and intellectual history. Author and editor of literally dozens of books, pamphlets, and articles, you were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction for The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture and the “Trifecta”—the Bancroft Prize, the J. Beveridge Award of the American Historical Association and the National Book Award—for The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, characterized as “the most eloquent and scholarly book on slavery we now have in English,” “a work of majestic scale, written with consummate skill,” and by M.I. Finley, as “a large, immensely learned, readable, exciting, disturbing volume, one of the most important to have been published on the subject of slavery in modern times.” We look forward now to the added kudos that certainly await you when you publish your ongoing major project, the two-volume work entitled The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation.

Since your arrival at Yale you also have been an influential force on campus, guiding undergraduates and graduate students alike, and you have pulled more than your weight in the councils of the University, acting as DGS for two terms in American Studies, sitting on innumerable Senior Appointment Committees, on the Humanities Advisory Committee and on the Publications Committee of Yale Press. Away from the University you have made your presence felt in such bodies as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Organization of American Historians, where you served as president in 1988-89. But perhaps nothing is more characteristic of your social conscience and sense of justice than your penchant for reaching out beyond the Academy to spread understanding. One such lecture inspired two Yale alumni to help you found the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale, the conferences, seminars, and events of which inspire hundreds upon hundreds of students, faculty, schoolchildren, community members, and visitors yearly. You have taught as a Fulbright lecturer at the University of the West Indies, as the Harmondsworth Professor at Oxford and as a mentor and curriculum guide to high school teachers in New York City, hitting in each case the appropriate educational note and bringing enlightenment wherever you go. For all of your many gifts, and for your contributions in a multitude of areas over the years, the Yale faculty now salutes you in gratitude and wishes you many more happy and prolific years.

Tribute Editor: Penelope Laurans