The Board of Trustees and Headmaster of Portsmouth Abbey School are proud to announce that Dr. John Malcolm McCardell, Jr., will deliver the commencement address to the Class of 2019 on Sunday, May 26.
Dr. McCardell is a distinguished historian and respected national leader in liberal arts education. He possesses a record of achievement as a scholar of the American South and is a respected national figure in the public discussion about higher education and student life. He currently serves as the vice-chancellor and president of Sewanee: The University of the South, where he is also a history professor.
A Maryland native and a 1971 graduate of Washington and Lee University, Dr. McCardell completed graduate work at The Johns Hopkins University and at Harvard University where he earned a Ph.D. in history in 1976. For his dissertation, “The Idea of a Southern Nation,” he was awarded the 1977 Allan Nevins Prize by the Society of American Historians.
After graduation, Dr. McCardell joined the history faculty at Middlebury College in 1976 and served as Middlebury’s president from 1992 until he stepped down in 2004. Dr. McCardell was named professor emeritus, and he and his wife, Bonnie, received an Honorary Alumni Plaque Award from the Alumni Association to highlight their many years and multiple dimensions of service. In 2009, they both received honorary degrees from the College.
In January 2010, Dr. McCardell was elected to be the 16th vice-chancellor of Sewanee: The University of the South. Sewanee is a 13,000-acre liberal arts university known for being a top producer of Rhodes Scholars and for its publication of The Sewanee Review, the longest running literary magazine in the country. The university has graduate programs in literature, the founder of which was a Bread Loaf graduate, as well as The School in Theology, an Episcopal seminary.
Dr. McCardell, a prolific writer, has authored many essays, chapters, articles, and book reviews. His specialty is U.S. history in the 19th century with special emphasis on the Old South and on American historiography. In addition, he served as chairman of the Division III Presidents’ Council of the NCAA in 2003-04 and led a successful, comprehensive reform effort. He is the founder and director of Choose Responsibility, an organization dedicated to exploring and advocating the lowering of the legal drinking age to 18 and issuing drinking learner permits to adults age 18, 19, and 20 in an effort to promote responsible consumption. He authored an op-ed in The New York Times in 2004 saying, "the 21-year-old drinking age is bad social policy and terrible law." He later spearheaded the creation of the Amethyst Initiative, a statement of over 120 college presidents across the United States calling for reconsideration of drinking age laws.
Dr. McCardell serves on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU). NAICU board members set the association agenda on federal higher education policy; actively encourage support of association priorities and initiatives; and oversee the organization’s financial administration. In 2015-2016, he chaired the board.
He has been a trustee of The Episcopal High School and Washington and Lee University, and currently serves on the boards of Porter-Gaud School in Charleston, SC, and the South Carolina Historical Society.
Dr. McCardell is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Omicron Delta Kappa and has been honored with grants and fellowships from the American Philosophical Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute for Southern Studies.