Wilfred M. McClay holds the Victor Davis Hanson Chair in Classical History and Western Civilization at Hillsdale College. Before moving to Hillsdale in the fall of 2021, he was the G.T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty at the University of Oklahoma, and the director of the Center for the History of Liberty.
His book Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story (Encounter, 2019) gave rise to a student workbook, a teacher’s guide and a young reader’s edition. Among his numerous earlier works are The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America (University of North Carolina Press, 1994), which was awarded the Merle Curti Award of the Organization of American Historians for the best book in American intellectual history, and Figures in the Carpet: Finding the Human Person in the American Past (Eerdmans, 2007).
Professor McClay served for eleven years on the National Council on the Humanities, the advisory board for the National Endowment for the Humanities, and is currently is a member of the U.S. Commission on the Semiquincentennial, which has been charged with planning the celebration of the nation’s 250th birthday in 2026. He has been the recipient of fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Academy of Education, and served as a Fulbright Senior Lecturer in American History at the University of Rome.