Davis Robinson

Davis Robinson ’57 is a living example of the long-lasting effects of non sibi. As the Legal Adviser to the United States Department of State, Robinson established the Iran-US Claims Tribunal in The Hague and presented two major cases before the International Court of Justice. Since then, he has been working as a United States Foreign Service Officer.Robinson was born in New York City and grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut. After the financial crash in 1929, Robinson’s father lost his job on Wall Street. He was subsequently offered a job at the Academy, to teach under the newly acquired Harkness gift. Many of Robinson’s family members attended Exeter after his parents settled down near the Academy, including his older brother Thomas and his godfather Howard Gross. “It was just sort of understood that I would go to Exeter, so I went in the fall of 1954 as a prep,” he said.At Exeter, Robinson was a resident of Cilley Hall for two years and switched into Soule Hall for his senior year. He was involved with PEAN, played tennis and squash.Robinson graduated from the Academy at 16, turning 17 in the summer before attending Yale. “When I got to Yale, I was very immature socially,” he said. “That’s where coeducation, of course, has done such a great deal for the Academy,” he added.Barnes Ellis ’57 was Robinson’s classmate both at PEA and at Yale. Ellis recalled Robinson’s pervasive interest in history. “There was a time when he spent the summer out here in Oregon, which happened to be the summer [during] Nixon’s impeachment proceedings, so he and I were just glued to the television,” he said.At the time, Instructor in History Emeritus Jack Herney led the Washington Intern Program, where Robinson arranged for Washington grandees to speak to the interns “including Potter Stewart, a Supreme Court Justice, which was a special treat for the students, of course, since we met Justice Stewart in the Supreme Court itself,” Herney said. “He always remained a strong supporter of the intern program and other PEA educational programs.”In terms of his memories on campus, Robinson especially remembers the Volkswagen caper, which prompted a dean to dub it the greatest senior prank in the history of the Academy.In this plot, Robinson, along with a group of students, decided to take the “brand new Volkswagen bug” of Instructor Valentino Bassetto. At around 11 o’clock in the evening, a group of students lifted the Volkswagen and carried it up onto the stage of the assembly hall without leaving a scratch on the car. However, a German instructor was still in the building when the students left the Volkswagen. At around midnight, he went through the assembly hall and, seeing the car, immediately called Dean Robert Kessler, who, along with the football coach, the swimming coach and the wrestling coach, brought the car down, damaging it in the process. As assembly was required, Robinson expected the car to be there in front of the whole student body, but was surprised to see it missing. “When we went into the assembly, the next morning, of course full of ourselves, the car was gone,” he said. “And the faculty, to their everlasting credit, decided they’d say nothing. So no mention of it was made until we got our diplomas in June, where the dean got up and said to the senior class: that was the single greatest prank in the history of Phillips Exeter Academy.”Ellis was then the Student Council President, and remembers the event from a different perspective. “I get a visit from Dean Kessler, and he said some students carried this vehicle up and put it up on the stage. He wanted to somehow get it down before chapel started the next morning,” he said. “It was something the conspirators always laughed about, and it was an episode for which our class was quite famous.”Robinson’s interest in geography and history initially began after he began collecting stamps. “It show[s] how the world has changed,” he explained. He then went on to explore Foreign Relations and the Foreign Service at Yale University.His non-sibi attitude, combined with his interest in world affairs, led Robinson to pursue Foreign Service as a career. In his senior year, he took his Foreign Service exam and immediately proceeded to Washington to take his oral exam after graduation. With the rapid timeline, he entered the Foreign Service in September of 1961 at a very young age.In the beginning of his career, Robinson was posted in Egypt and Jordan, where he worked in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency during the negotiation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and as a Staff Assistant to Secretary of State William P. Rogers. Even after his varied accomplishments, he decided to take a leave of absence to further his education and attend Harvard Law school. While at Harvard, Robinson kept with his non sibi roots, serving as president of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. After Harvard, Robinson returned to the Foreign Service for a couple years. However, he got married and had a child and decided to pursue practicing law. In the states, Robinson practiced law in multiple firms, from Wall Street to Washington. This allowed for him to experience the two important sectors of law, public and private, that would be integral to his later work.This experience in the public sector would soon pay off. In 1981, President Reagan nominated and confirmed him as the legal adviser to the US Department of State, essentially the general counsel. During this time, he represented the United States in the US-Iran claims tribunal and during two other international court cases. Reflecting back, he described his role as “the best single legal job almost on Earth.” In 1982, Robinson retired from his private firm, in which he was a partner. Later, he served as an international arbitrator in high profile cases. Throughout all his successes, Robinson retained Exeter’s values and teachings. “I think it was drilled into us that we were extremely privileged to attend such a great school, and with that privilege is the responsibility to contribute to society in some positive fashion.”