ACADEMIC INNOVATIONS

In 2000-2001 Cathy N. Davidson (Duke University) and David Theo Goldberg (University of California Humanities Research Institute) worked with other academics and technology experts to create HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory or “Haystack”). NSF has called it “the world’s first and oldest academic social network.”
In 2022, HASTAC became “HASTAC Commons” and joined the collaborative, multi-institutional Knowledge Commons.
Contents from extant HASTAC sites (ca. 2004-2017) are archived at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University.
Content from 2017 forward was
HASTAC Scholars. Co-Directed each year by Fellows in the Futures Initiative at the Graduate Center (CUNY), the HASTAC Scholars each year select 50-75 students from around the world to be HASTAC Scholars. This student network forms reading groups, organizes Digital Fridays, contributes to interdisciplinary programs, and collaborates on annual book reviews of relevant books on technology and society.
For a history of HASTAC, see Cathy N. Davidson, “How To Lead an Academic Social Network,” in the “How To” issue of Public Humanities, Volume 1, 19 February 2025. Published online by Cambridge University Press.

As Senior Advisor to the Chancellor on Transformation, Davidson worked on a number of programs in CUNY’s new Office of Transformation.
The Chancellor’s Duke Beyond program focuses on paid internships and works with faculty and staff across CUNY to find the most meaningful ways to connect classrooms (in all disciplines) to careers.
Davidson’s particular challenge was developing the Career Success Leaders, a faculty program across all twenty-six CUNY schools (two-year and four-year colleges, plus graduate and professional schools). The Career Success Leaders focuses jointly on both faculty success and student success, emphasizing the crucial role of the classroom to students’ futures beyond the classroom.
Career Success Fellows emphasizes faculty peer-to-peer support, training, and research. Two faculty from each campus, one in STEM or business and one in liberal arts, work together with seasoned administrators and faculty leaders in the Office of Transformation to develop programs for faculty that tie their research and teaching to student success.

Futures Initiative Dedicated to “advancing equity and innovation in higher education.”

“When Davidson came to the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, she was inspired to be part of the nation’s largest, urban, public university system. CUNY is also the most underfunded institution in the country, the most diverse, with the most immigrants, the most students living below the poverty line–and the most inspiring. Rather than focus on building new facilities or new interdisciplinary programs, with a concentration mostly on faculty research, most of her energy at the Graduate Center has been on students–training doctoral students to teach diverse, mostly first generation undergraduates and do research that contributes to the public good.”

At Duke University, Davidson was named the first Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies (at Duke and, possibly anywhere). Her main responsibility was to redesign Duke’s budget system to promote inter-school collaboration and to work with faculty and administrators to facilitate cutting-edge programs across the different schools at the university. She worked with faculty and other administrators on over sixty interdisciplinary programs across every school of the university.
As VPIS, Davidson worked with faculty and other administrators to create:
- John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies, Cofounder and Codirector
- John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, Cofounder and Codirector
- Program in Information Science and Studies (ISS), Founding Codirector
- Nasher Museum of Art
- The new additions to the Duke University Libraries
- Center for Interdisciplinary Medicine and Science (CIMAS)
- French Science Center
- Durham Performing Arts Center (DUPAC)
- There were also many centers and programs including the University Scholars Program, an innovative program where entering (typically full scholarship) undergraduates were teamed with graduate and professional school students to lead innovative programs across campus. This program was funded and inspired by Melinda French Gates, with whom I worked closely to design and develop this program..
- And then the famous iPod experiment.

Innovations