Career
Davids received $700 for his labors and acknowledgement in the foreword that he "materially assisted in the preparation of several chapters," 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 He joined the faculty at Georgetown University in 1947. His students included future United States president Bill Clinton when Clinton was a Georgetown undergraduate in 1968, future first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, and historian Douglas Brinkley, with whom he discussed his involvement in the Kennedy book
Davids was born in 1920 and grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and graduated from Brooklyn College.
At Georgetown he was one of the most popular professors at the School of Foreign Service, where he taught a generation of future diplomats and policymakers. His own textbook of American history, America and the World of Our Time, was published by Random House in several editions in the early 1960s.
A specialist in United States.-China relations, he edited over 40 volumes that compiled all of the United States diplomatic papers with China from the inception of United States.-China relations. Jules Davids died in 1996 after suffering for many years from Alzheimer"s disease, and Frances Davids wrote a book, Living with Alzheimer"s, 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 40 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 West. Averell Harriman (begun with Harriman"s collaboration and then continued by Davids alone) was never completed.
Jules Davids"s epitaph reads: Greatly loved, a man of gentle wisdom.
