It was winter 1974 when Bruce Davis ’73, MA ’75 hobbled across campus to inquire about taking a class at the University’s new School of Criminal Justice. Davis was on crutches — again. He’d spent 11 months in a full-leg, straight plaster cast after a football injury destroyed his knee two years earlier, and now he was recovering from the first of many follow-up surgeries. He maneuvered painfully around the podium’s snowbanks, careful to avoid any icy patches. The Albany wind sliced at his cheeks, urging him to turn around. But Davis was curious about that class, and he always followed his curiosity.
Those difficult steps were the first of Davis’ 50-year journey to obtain a doctorate in criminal justice. This past May, the entrepreneur, inventor and longtime CEO of Digimarc returned to campus to accept his degree at commencement and reflect on how UAlbany impacted his lifetime of success.
“I was out of place in my environment,” says Davis, a first-generation college graduate, about growing up in the small village of Mohawk, N.Y. There were no books in his childhood home but as early as he can remember, his father referred to him as “The Professor.”
He was an excellent student and also captain of his high school football team. Colleges were interested. In his senior year, he was offered an athletic scholarship to an elite private Division I university. A guidance counselor discouraged the idea of accepting, telling Davis he belonged at state school. “That was the biggest influence I had on getting to Albany,” Davis recalls.
His very first visit to campus was for freshman orientation on Indian Quad in the fall of 1970. “I was awestruck by what I saw,” says Davis. “The size of the school, the big buildings the University has, and the complexity of the students around me, because I came from a small town which was relatively homogeneous and not cosmopolitan. I had not traveled to a large city like Albany.”
Unintimidated by his new surroundings, Davis leaned in with fascination. “I learned a lot about life during that year,” he says. “I did my own sort of independent study.” The University was trying out a pass/fail grading policy, and in the absence of accountability from traditional letter grades, Davis was free to explore outside of the classroom. He made friends and eagerly absorbed the unfamiliar experiences of a college campus still brimming with 1960s counterculture and idealism.
He fed his academic interests independently too, spending hours at the library devouring books and socializing in the stacks. It was there he met fellow student and aspiring writer, Peter Golden. “We became friendly and did a lot of talking, usually about psychology and philosophy,” Golden remembers. Now a published author, Golden describes his lifelong friend as “insatiably curious.”
Davis logged 230 books read in one year, in addition to schoolwork, paid jobs, playing football for the University and living in the moment as an 18-year-old who suddenly saw the world open before him.
The University quickly abandoned its pass/fail experiment and by sophomore year, Davis was more focused on his coursework. He took the maximum number of classes allowed each semester and describes, “spontaneously moving from place to place, trying on things, trying to figure out what was right for me.” He graduated in 1973 with a double major in business and psychology, but he was no longer the carefree, wide-eyed kid who had arrived on campus for orientation.
A serious injury on the field had ended his football career. Then, his mother died. “I lost my athletic identity and I lost my mother, who was my best friend, in the same year. I was devastated,” says Davis. He was ready to make a change, but a cast and crutches limited his job options. He stayed on at UAlbany, enrolling in a graduate program at the School of Business but says, “I [was] just spending time there.”
Then something piqued his curiosity. Browsing the course catalog, he read the description for a class called The Epistemology of Crime and Justice taught in the University’s fledgling School of Criminal Justice, a still-emerging academic discipline.
He made that fateful winter trek to the school to sign up, but when he arrived, the secretary was out for lunch. He poked his head inside an office and nervously shuffled back. “The big guy” was in there. Dean Vincent O’Leary called out, “Can I help you?” Davis entered on his crutches and immediately bonded with O’Leary, a polio survivor who also used them. The two talked at length and the next day, Davis was admitted to the school as a graduate degree student.
The interdisciplinary study of criminal justice sated Davis’ intellectual hunger. He immersed himself in classes, received a teaching fellowship, created a comprehensive research index that became his first major academic publication, and worked as a substantive editor at the Hindelang Criminal Justice Research Center where, he says, “I didn't have to wear shoes to work. I thought that was a great job benefit.”
He completed his master's degree. When a professor encouraged him to go out and find a full-time job, Davis remembers thinking, “‘Why would I leave this?’ It was heaven. I got over my bad period there and I embraced the new reality. I was just so happy.”
He transitioned into the PhD program where he met renowned criminology scholar Graeme Newman, who, to Davis, embodied all the ideals of great professorship and mentoring. “[Graeme] challenged all of us to break down our classic thinking, to get uncomfortable, to think about things we don't want to think about, read stuff we don't want to read, to break out of the norm…”
Newman assigned his classes a new book to read every week, a challenge to keep up with for most students. “Not Bruce,” Newman remembers. “Not only did he read them all, but he read other books that were mostly related and then peppered me with those books as well, most of which I had not read and in some cases added them to the reading lists for my future students.”
Davis began his dissertation on the topic of indecent exposure within the context of the legal management of bodies, with Newman as his advisor.
Up to this point, Davis hadn’t given his career and life beyond UAlbany much consideration. He was simply having fun being a student, reveling in expanding his ever-growing base of knowledge. When a girlfriend suggested he apply to law school, he said, “Well, OK,” because he had no other plan. Davis deferred his acceptance at Columbia Law School for two more years of criminal justice work but ultimately left UAlbany with his dissertation unfinished.
What followed was a law degree, a spontaneous trip hitchhiking around the world, and a business career that included 24 years as CEO of Digimarc, a company best known for its revolutionary digital watermarking technology. In 2015, Davis won the Alumni Excellence Award for Entrepreneurship where it was noted that “his creativity, leadership skills, and appetite for risk-taking and reinvention have produced a track record of remarkable accomplishments.”
In 2021, Davis was recovering from yet another orthopedic surgery. “I haven’t changed much in 50 years,” he jokes. Retired, in remission from prostate cancer and home-bound due to Covid, he felt moved to contribute something relevant. “And there's the old [dissertation] draft sitting around,” he remembers. He read it over and realized he might have something.
He sent the draft to Newman, still at UAlbany, asking, “Is this worthwhile, should we pursue it? Get the band back together?"
“I was certainly shocked,” Newman says of hearing from his former student after so many years. “But quickly regained my senses when I began to read the draft and recognized immediately the Bruce I knew.” He saw the well-researched beginnings of a unique dissertation.
Eighteen months later, Davis successfully defended his doctoral thesis, Indecent Exposure and the Court as Custos Morum. He says understanding the topic “far transcends my natural life,” but hopes his work opens the door for others to do more and one day make policy recommendations that better society.
On May 11, 2024, he crossed the commencement stage at Broadview Center. “I don't need the ceremony for me,” Davis remarks. “I'm here to honor Graeme and pay respect for the profound impact he had on my understanding of our world.”
What’s next for the perpetual student? “Avoiding surgery and improving my golf game,” Davis says, as well as spending time with his family. After a knowing pause, he adds, “Then maybe some writing. I’m searching ultimately for truth. I've always been searching for it and hoping to make small contributions.”
Davis is certain he will always be connected to UAlbany. “For all the wrong reasons, the guidance counselor was right,” he reflects. “I belonged at Albany. I can't imagine I could have had a more successful experience. It was just wonderful for me.”
The book version of Davis' dissertation, Indecent Exposure and the Court as Custodian of Morals, is available on Amazon in Audible, Kindle, and paperback editions.
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