Harvie Branscomb

Bennett Harvie Branscomb (December 25, 1894 – July 23, 1998) was an American theologian and academic administrator. He served as the fourth chancellor of Vanderbilt University, a private university in Nashville, Tennessee, from 1946 to 1963. Prior to his appointment at Vanderbilt, he was the director of the Duke University Libraries and dean of the Duke Divinity School. Additionally, he served as a professor of Christian theology at Southern Methodist University. He was the author of several books about New Testament theology.

Early life Branscomb was born on December 25, 1894, in Huntsville, Alabama. His father, Lewis C. Branscomb, was a Methodist minister and the president of the Alabama Anti-Saloon League. where he earned another Bachelor of Arts degree in 1917 receiving a coveted Greek prize and First Honors in Theology. He joined the United States Army and was stationed at Camp Gordon during World War I, Both men later served as Chancellor of Vanderbilt University.

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

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

Upon Branscomb's arrival at Vanderbilt in 1946, higher education in the South was strictly segregated, and he was told that no Blacks had ever been on the Vanderbilt campus except in a "menial capacity." Branscomb viewed segregation as not only unjust but as a roadblock in Vanderbilt's – indeed the South's – path to national recognition and influence. As a Southerner, he was aware of the resistance to change of the all-white Vanderbilt Board of Trustees, the alumni, and the white Nashville community. Branscomb staked a strategy for integrating the university that was deliberate, methodical, and pragmatic.

Early in his tenure, 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. In 1949, when Vanderbilt Law School received its first application from an African American, the Board directed Branscomb to reply that the application would not be considered and rejected Branscomb's suggested additional language "at this time."

In 1952 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. Based on that letter, Branscomb requested two commitments from the Board of Trust. The first was that if a qualified African American should apply to the Divinity School, the application should be considered. a reference to court ordered integration at the University of Tennessee. The Board agreed. This commitment resulted in the admission of Blacks to the Vanderbilt Law School in 1954, which led to public uproar and calls for Branscomb's resignation.

Meanwhile, the editor of the local newspaper, James Geddes Stahlman, was publishing inflammatory anti-integration articles in the Nashville paper, including the questionable assertion that Lawson was advising university students to break the law. Stahlman was an influential member of the Vanderbilt Board of Trust and on its executive committee, which voted to expel Lawson. The university later apologized to Rev. Lawson, who returned to teach at Vanderbilt from 2006 to 2009.

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

At the time of Branscomb's retirement in 1963, all of Vanderbilt's schools, colleges, eating facilities, and dormitories were integrated. In a speech at Vanderbilt Medical Center in 2006, Rev. Lawson expressed appreciation to the late Chancellor for taking the bold step of integrating Vanderbilt when almost all Southern universities were still segregated.

From 1963 to 1964 he was an educational consultant for the World Bank, and he chaired the United States Commission for UNESCO from 1963 to 1965. He 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.