Wilfred M. McClay

Wilfred M. McClay is an American academic and the current occupant of the G.T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty at the University of Oklahoma.

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

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 The Trinity Forum, 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.

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.

• 1995 Merle Curti Award
• 1997-98 Templeton Honor Rolls
• Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
• National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship
• National Academy of Education Fellowship
• Howard Foundation Fellowship
• Earhart Foundation Fellowship
• Danforth Foundation Fellowship

• Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story Encounter Books 2019
• "The Strange Persistence of Guilt" The Hedgehog Review Spring, 2017
• Why Place Matters: Geography, Identity, and Civic Life in Modern America. New Atlantis/Encounter Books. 2014. ISBN 978-1-59403-716-0
• "Obama’s Middle Eastern Policy and the 2012 Election" The Jerusalem Review November 1, 2012
• "Keeping Time" First Things June/July 2009
• The Soul and the City The City Summer 2009
• "Mediating Institutions" First Things April 2009
• "Uncomfortable Belief" First Things May 2008
• "Beyond the Right to Life" The New Atlantis, Number 14, Fall 2006
• The Federal Idea Address to the Philadelphia Society, November 1996
• "The Continuing Irony of American History" First Things February 2002
• "The Christian Historian and the Idea of Progress" in Confessing History: Explorations of Christian Faith and the Historian's Vocation. University of Notre Dame Press. 2010. ISBN 0-268-02903-2.
• The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America. UNC Press. 1994. ISBN 978-0-8078-4419-9. Wilfred M. McClay.
• The Student's Guide to U.S. History. ISI Books. 2000. ISBN 978-1-882926-45-9.
• Hugh Heclo, Wilfred M. McClay, eds. (2003). Religion Returns to the Public Square: Faith and Policy in America. Woodrow Wilson Center Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-7195-5.CS1 maint: uses editors parameter (link)
• Figures in the Carpet: Finding the Human Person in the American Past, editor, Eerdmans, 2007