The socialist magazine Jacobin described Davis as "an internationally esteemed mathematician, a minor science fiction writer of note, and among the most celebrated political prisoners in the United States during the years of the high Cold War.

At Harvard, he joined the Astounding Science-Fiction Fanclub, whose members included John B. Michel, Frederik Pohl, Isaac Asimov, and Donald Wollheim.

In 1945, Davis graduated Harvard early and also received a commission from Naval Reserve Midshipman's School and spent a year in the US Navy as a minesweeper.

In 1946, he returned to Harvard as a graduate student in Mathematics, rejoined the CPUSA, and joined the Federation of American Scientists, founded by former members of the Manhattan Project.

In 1954, UM suspended Davis, Clement Markert, and Mark Nickerson for refusing to cooperate with HUAC hearings held in Lansing, Michigan.

He hoped to establish a precedent that HUAC could not question witnesses on their political affiliations, but the US Supreme Court in 1959 refused to hear his case.

A PhD thesis titled "Backward Perturbation and Sensitivity Analysis of Structured Polynomial Eigenomial Eigenvalue Problem"[6] is dedicated to this theorem.

One of the earliest, published May 1946, was The Nightmare, later the lead story in A Treasury of Science Fiction, edited by Groff Conklin; it argued for a national policy of decentralizing industry to evade nuclear attacks by terrorists.

[12] Davis—along with two other professors, Mark Nickerson and Clement Markert—refused to cooperate with the House Unamerican Activities Committee and was subsequently dismissed from the University of Michigan.

[15] Recent speakers have included: Cass Sunstein (2008), Nadine Strossen (2007), Bill Keller (2006), Floyd Abrams (2005), and Noam Chomsky (2004).

[1] At his death, long-time friend Alan M. Wald wrote, "Chan Davis, who died last month at the age of 96, faced down McCarthyite blacklists and imprisonment to pursue a brilliant academic career.