Jules Davids

Jules Davids was a Professor of Diplomatic History at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He is famous for teaching a future United States President, Bill Clinton when Clinton was a Georgetown undergraduate in 1968 and previously for teaching (in a graduate course on political courage) a future First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy when JFK was a Senator contemplating a run for the Presidency and preparing to write a book. The book developed into PROFILES IN COURAGE, and it helped establish JFK's stature for becoming President. Jules Davids "materially assisted in the preparation of several chapters" according to the Foreword, but extensive revelations from many sources, including a detailed account by Jules Davids himself, establish that Davids prepared initial drafts of five of the chapters on the book that then won Kennedy a Pulitzer Prize. Davids, who was born in 1921 and grew up in Brooklyn, New York (where he graduated from Brooklyn College) was one of the most popular Professors at the School of Foreign Service where he taught a generation of future diplomats and policy-makers. His own textbook of American history, AMERICA AND THE WORLD OF OUR TIME, was published by Random House in several editions in the early 1960's. He went on to edit over 40 volumes that compiled all of the United States diplomatic papers with China from the inception of U.S.-China relations. A complete set of those volumes exists in the Georgetown University libarary. He was married for 45 years to Frances Davids of Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York, who taught 5th grade in a lengthy teaching career. They had two children whom they raised in Kensington (Garrett Park Estates) and Bethesda, Maryland: Paul Davids, a well-known film producer/director and writer (and artist) in Hollywood (www.pauldavids.com) who is married to Hollace Davids, Senior Vice-President of Special Projects for Universal Pictures -- and Jeanie Dwyer, who with her husband Kevin has three children (Matthew, Julie and Colin), two of whom have graduated from the University of Southern California and one of whom is currently a student there. Jules Davids died in 1996 after suffering for many years from Alzheimer's disease, and Frances Davids wrote a book (LIVING WITH ALZHEIMERS) about her role as a caregiver. One of Paul Davids' films deals to some extent with the legacy of his father (THE ARTIST AND THE SHAMAN) and the great sense of personal loss that followed Jules Davids' death. Jules Davids, scholar, author, professor, brilliant lecturer at Georgetown University for forty years, is greatly loved and his legacy is still widely respected. He is honored every year at Georgetown by the Jules Davids medal given in his honor. His final book, which was to have been a definitive study of the life and career of Averell Harriman (begun with Harriman's collaboration and then continued by Davids alone) was never completed. Jules Davids' epitaph reads: Greatly loved, a man of gentle wisdom.