Dr. Dwight A McBride
President of The New School
In April of 2020, Dr. Dwight A. McBride became the ninth President of The New School in New York City. An accomplished leader in higher education, educator, scholar, and author with close to 3 decades of experience, Dr. McBride has encouraged innovation in scholarship and teaching, launched initiatives to build interdisciplinary strength around global challenges, created environments that foster inclusive excellence, and expanded opportunities for experiential learning.
Prior to his appointment at The New School, Dr. McBride was Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at Emory University, where he also held the position of Asa Griggs Candler Professor of African American Studies, Distinguished Affiliated Professor of English, and Associated Faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Previously, he served at Northwestern University, as Dean of The Graduate School, Associate Provost for Graduate Education, and Daniel Hale Williams Professor of African American Studies, English, and Performance Studies. He also served as the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago and was on the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh.
A leading scholar of race and literary studies, Dr. McBride has published award-winning books, essays, articles, and edited volumes that examine connections between race theory, Black studies, and identity politics, including James Baldwin Now, Impossible Witnesses: Truth Abolitionism, and Slave Testimony, Black Like Us: A Century of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual African American Fiction, and A Melvin Dixon Critical Reader. His book Why I Hate Abercrombie and Fitch: Essays on Race and Sexuality, a collection of essays offering contemporary cultural criticism, was nominated for the 2006 Lambda Literary Award and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. He is a two-time Lambda Literary Award winner and has been principal investigator on grants from the Teagle Foundation, Arcus Foundation, and National Science Foundation. In 2003, he was awarded the Monette/Horowitz Trust 2003 Achievement Award for independent research that combats homophobia.
Dr. McBride co-edited the posthumous books of two colleagues: Lindon Barrett’s Racial Blackness and the Discontinuity of Western Modernity and Vincent Woodard’s The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism within US Slave Culture. His research has been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Dr. McBride is co-founder and co-editor of the annual journal, the James Baldwin Review, and co-editor of The New Black Studies book series at the University of Illinois Press.
Dr. McBride is a founding co-director, with Dr. Earl Lewis, of the Academic Leadership Institute, a partnership between the University of Michigan and The New School that supports the development of academic leaders into higher education leadership roles who are committed to diversity and inclusion. Dr. McBride serves on the Board of the Institute for International Education, the Dan David Prize, and is a member of LGBTQ Presidents in Higher Education. He is also on the Board of Directors of Con Edison.
A native of South Carolina, Dr. McBride received his AB in English with a certificate in African American Studies from Princeton University, and his MA and PhD in English from the University of California, Los Angeles.
@NEWSCHOOL.EDU
