About
David Emory Shi
President Emeritus & Professor of History, Furman University
Dr. David E. Shi (pronounced “Shy”), the 10th president of Furman University (Greenville, SC) from 1994 to 2010, is a leading figure in American higher education and a preeminent historian whose books have sold almost 3 million copies. A prolific writer and speaker, David has shared his knowledge of such topics as American history, sustainability, the pursuit of happiness, and leadership with thousands of people in the corporate, higher education, nonprofit, and religious sectors.
Shi, an Atlanta native and a 1973 magna cum laude Furman graduate who was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa before earning a Ph.D. in history from the University of Virginia (1976), championed Furman’s emphasis on engaged learning, energy conservation, and environmental stewardship.
An All-Southern Conference football player at Furman and a Distinguished Military Graduate, Shi was inducted into the U.S. Army ROTC Hall of Fame in 2016.
In 2003, David E. Shi received the Presidential Leadership Award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and was named Greenville Magazine’s Business Person of the Year.
Under David’s direction, Furman became a national leader in promoting sustainability during the early twenty-first century, David was a charter signatory of the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment in 2006. During his presidency, Furman built the first LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental) certified building in South Carolina (there are now 9 LEED-certified buildings on campus). In 2010, the environmental organization Upstate Forever presented Shi with its Extraordinary Achievement in Environmental Conservation Award. That same year, Furman University’s Board of Trustees named its new Institute for Sustainability in honor of Shi.
Established in 2008, the David E. Shi Institute for Sustainability was featured in two cover stories in Southern Living magazine. It generates all its electricity needs from renewable energy sources and features a student-run organic garden that supplies all its produce to the university’s dining hall. Over its first ten years, the Shi Institute has evolved into an animating hub where educators, students, and community leaders work together to address the most complex issues of sustainability, on and off campus.
David E. Shi’s books are used in classrooms at over 800 colleges and universities.
A specialist in intellectual and cultural history who taught for seventeen years at Davidson College, where he also chaired the history department, David is the author of several books, including Matthew Josephson, Bourgeois Bohemian (Yale University Press, 1980), The Simple Life: Plain Living and High Thinking in American Culture (Oxford University Press, 1985), which was a History Book Club selection and Pulitzer Prize nominee, and Facing Facts: Realism in American Thought and Culture, 1850-1920 (Oxford University Press, 1994).
He is also author of the best-selling America: A Narrative History (W. W. Norton), now in its twelfth edition, and For the Record (W.W. Norton), now in its eighth edition. These books are used in classrooms at over 800 colleges and universities.
David E. Shi is also a busy newspaper essayist. He has published several hundred columns in newspapers such as The Greenville News, The Christian Science Monitor, The Charlotte Observer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and the Philadelphia Inquirer, among others. His columns and essays are also heard on National Public Radio. A collection of his speeches, essays, and columns has been published under the title The Bell Tower and Beyond: Reflections on Learning and Life (University of South Carolina Press, 2002).
Shi maintains an active schedule as a public speaker on campuses and at corporate and community events. He has recently served on the Advisory Board for Duke Energy, the Boards of Trustees at Brevard College and Warren Wilson College, and the Board of Managers of the South Carolina Historical Society. In 2018, Furman University inducted him into its Benefactors’ Circle, honoring those who have donated over $1 million to the institution.
Shi lives at Pawleys Island, South Carolina, near the site of Litchfield, an 18th-century rice plantation along the Waccamaw River.