Wilfred M. McClay


Wilfred M. McClay is an American academic currently on the faculty of Hillsdale College.

Early life and education

McClay graduated from St. John's College, and received a Ph.D. in history from Johns Hopkins University in 1987.

Career

McClay taught at Georgetown, Tulane, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Dallas before moving to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 1999, where he held the SunTrust Bank Chair of Excellence in Humanities.
McClay is a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and at, a member of the Philadelphia Society, and a member of the Society of Scholars at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions of Princeton University. From 2002 through 2012, he served on the National Council on the Humanities, the advisory board for the National Endowment for the Humanities. He was the President of the Philadelphia Society for the year 2021-2022.
McClay serves on the Board of Visitors of Ralston College and on the editorial/advisory boards of The Wilson Quarterly, First Things, Society, Historically Speaking, The University Bookman, The New Atlantis, and The City.

Awards

Public lectures

In 2021, McClay delivered the thirty-fourth Erasmus Lecture, titled The Claims of Memory, hosted by First Things magazine and the Institute on Religion and Public Life. In his lecture, McClay explored the moral and cultural importance of historical memory in shaping identity and civic responsibility. He argued that societies that neglect or distort their collective memory risk losing a sense of moral continuity and purpose, emphasizing the need to recover a truthful and redemptive understanding of the past.

Writings

Books

  • Encounter Books 2019The Hedgehog Review Spring, 2017. New Atlantis/Encounter Books. 2014.
  • in Figures in the Carpet: Finding the Human Person in the American Past, editor, Eerdmans, 2007

Articles

The Jerusalem Review November 1, 2012First Things March 2011First Things June/July 2009The City Summer 2009First Things April 2009First Things May 2008The New Atlantis, Number 14, Fall 2006