Nathaniel Davis

Nathaniel Davis (April 12, 1925 – May 16, 2011) was a well-known career diplomat who served in the United States Foreign Service and the Peace Corps for 36 years. His final years were spent teaching at Claremont Colleges.

Davis was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on April 12, 1925. His father, Harvey Nathaniel Davis, taught at Harvard University and his mother, Alice Rohde Davis, was a research medical doctor. In 1928, the family moved to the campus of Stevens Institute of Technology, in Hoboken, N.J., upon the appointment of Harvey Davis as the college's president. Nathaniel Davis attended the Stevens Hoboken Academy and graduated from Philips Exeter Academy, in Exeter, N.H., in 1942. He attended Brown University where he served in the Navy Reserve. He graduated from Brown and obtained a commission as an ensign in the U.S. Navy in September, 1944, but as a member of the Class of 1946. He served aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Lake Champlain until 1946. He earned a masters and ultimately his doctorate (Ph.D.) from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University in 1960.

Davis began his Foreign Service career with an assignment in Prague in 1947, followed by postings in Florence, Rome and Moscow, before returning to the U.S. in 1956 to work at the Soviet Desk at the State Department in Washington, D.C. His next foreign assignment was in Caracas, Venezuela, from 1960 to 1962. From 1962 to 1965, he served in the Peace Corps, first as Special Assistant to the Director, R. Sargent Shriver, and later Deputy Director for Program Development and Operations. He left the Peace Corps in 1965 to serve as the United States Envoy to Bulgaria (1965–1966). After his ambassadorship in Bulgaria, he served on the staff of the National Security Council in the White House, as President Lyndon B. Johnson's senior advisor on Soviet and Eastern European affairs, as well as the United Nations. In 1968, he went to Guatemala to serve as Ambassador to Guatemala (1968–1971), followed by service as Ambassador to Chile (1971–1973). He was ambassador in Chile during the presidency of Salvador Allende and through the coup that deposed him. Davis wrote a history of that period called The Last Two Years of Salvador Allende (Cornell University Press, 1985, ). Upon his return from Chile, he held two positions at the assistant secretary level: as Director General of the Foreign Service (1973–1975) and as the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in the Ford administration from 1975 to 1976. Davis resigned from the latter post over a policy difference with then-Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, regarding covert action in Angola. Davis was subsequently appointed Ambassador to Switzerland (1976–1977). In 1977, Davis moved to Newport, R.I., where he taught at the Naval War College for six years as Diplomat in Residence. In 1983, he retired from the Foreign Service.

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