Charles Seymour - Career

Career

Seymour's teaching experience began at Yale in 1911 when he was made an instructor in history. He was made a full professor in 1918; and when he eventually left teaching, he had risen amongst the faculty to become Sterling Professor of History (1922–1927). He taught history at Yale from 1911 though 1937, when he became president of the university.

Seymour served as the chief of the Austro-Hungarian Division of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace in 1919. He was also the U.S. delegate on the Romanian, Yugoslavian, and Czechoslovakian Territorial Commissions in 1919.

In 1933, he delivered the Albert Shaw Lectures on Diplomatic History at Johns Hopkins University on the subject of American Diplomacy during the First World War.

Seymour served for ten years as the university's provost (1927–1937). During this period, Yale College was re-organized into a system of ten residential colleges, instituted in 1933 with the help of a grant by Yale graduate Edward S. Harkness, who admired the college systems at Oxford and Cambridge. Seymour became the first Master of Berkeley College.

At age 52, Seymour succeeded James Rowland Angell as the university's 15th president in October 1937. After his retirement in July 1950, he would be succeeded by Alfred Whitney Griswold.

After his retirement as president, Seymour continued his involvement with the university as curator of the papers of Edward M. House at the Yale University Library.

He died in Chatham, Massachusetts in 1963 after a long illness. His son, Charles Seymour, Jr., was a professor of art history at Yale.

Quote: "We seek the truth and will endure the consequences."