32 Facts About Harvie Branscomb

1.

Bennett Harvie Branscomb was an American theologian and academic administrator.

2.

Harvie Branscomb served as the fourth chancellor of Vanderbilt University, a private university in Nashville, Tennessee, from 1946 to 1963.

3.

Harvie Branscomb was the author of several books about New Testament theology.

4.

Harvie Branscomb's father, Lewis C Branscomb, was a Methodist minister and the president of the Alabama Anti-Saloon League.

5.

Harvie Branscomb earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Birmingham-Southern College in 1914.

6.

Harvie Branscomb was a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford's Wadham College, where he earned another Bachelor of Arts degree in 1917 and a distinguished master's degree in biblical studies, receiving a coveted Greek prize and First Honors in Theology.

7.

Harvie Branscomb joined the United States Army and was stationed at Fort Gordon during World War I, and he earned a PhD from Columbia University in 1924.

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8.

Harvie Branscomb began his career as an instructor in the department of philosophy at Southern Methodist University.

9.

Harvie Branscomb became a professor of New Testament literature at Duke University in 1925.

10.

Harvie Branscomb was the director of the Duke University Libraries from 1933 to 1941, Harvie Branscomb served as Dean of the Duke Divinity School from 1944 to 1946.

11.

Harvie Branscomb left the Deanship at Duke to become the fourth chancellor of Vanderbilt University from 1946 to 1963.

12.

Harvie Branscomb obtained support for the university from national institutions and recruited national figures to the Board of Trust, including Harold Sterling Vanderbilt, the great-grandson of Vanderbilt University's founder Cornelius Vanderbilt.

13.

Harvie Branscomb staked a strategy for integrating the university that was deliberate, methodical, and pragmatic.

14.

Early in his tenure, Harvie Branscomb broke ground by inviting faculty of Fisk University, an HBCU in Nashville, to attend Vanderbilt campus activities, and he and his wife Margaret included Fisk faculty in social events attended by the more liberal Vanderbilt Trustees and faculty.

15.

In 1952 Harvie Branscomb worked behind the scenes with the Vanderbilt Divinity School Dean to draft a letter under the Dean's signature stating that the Divinity faculty were in favor of integration.

16.

Harvie Branscomb refused to withdraw and under intense pressure from the Trustees, Chancellor Branscomb carried out the expulsion directive.

17.

Harvie Branscomb later re-examined his decision, regretting he did not consider the option of referring the matter to a committee to delay action for three months until Lawson's graduation.

18.

In 1962, Harvie Branscomb quietly suggested to the student newspaper that student calls for full University integration could be persuasive.

19.

Harvie Branscomb served as first chairman of the United States Advisory Commission for Education Exchange from 1947 to 1951.

20.

Harvie Branscomb served as vice-chairman of the United States delegation to the Unesco General Conference in Paris in 1964, chair of the United States Delegation to the World Conference on the Eradication of Illiteracy in Tehran in 1965.

21.

Harvie Branscomb traveled to Geneva for the United States Delegation to the World Health Organization Assembly in 1965 and 1966, and to Buenos Aires to chair the US Delegation to the Conference of Ministers of Education and Ministers in Charge of Planning in 1966.

22.

Harvie Branscomb was the author of several books about New Testament theology.

23.

Harvie Branscomb was the president of the National Association of Biblical Instructors in 1940.

24.

Harvie Branscomb served on the commission on church and war of the Federal Council of Churches, and on the American theological committee of the World Council of Churches.

25.

Harvie Branscomb served on the board of directors of the Association of Rhodes Scholars, and he was the editor of the American Oxonian in the 1940s.

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26.

Harvie Branscomb was on the board of the American Council of Learned Societies.

27.

Harvie Branscomb served on the editorial board of the South Atlantic Quarterly.

28.

Harvie Branscomb held honorary degrees from Brandeis University, Northwestern University, Southwestern University, and Hebrew Union College.

29.

Harvie Branscomb married Margaret Vaughan, the daughter of a lawyer from Greenville, Texas, and the niece of a Vanderbilt alumna, in 1921 and they were married 71 years.

30.

Harvie Branscomb played tennis and golf and raised gladioli and chrysanthemums.

31.

Harvie Branscomb died at age 103 on July 23,1998, in Nashville.

32.

Harvie Branscomb's funeral was held in Benton Chapel on the Vanderbilt campus, where his remains are interned in a vault along with his wife's.