The New School in New York City has announced the appointment of Dwight A. McBride as the educational institution’s ninth president. When he takes office next spring, he will be the first person of color to lead The New School.
The New School, founded in 1919 as the New School for Social Research, enrolls close to 7,500 undergraduate students and more than 3,000 graduate students, according to the latest data supplied to the U.S. Department of Education. African Americans make up 5 percent of the undergraduate student body.
Since 2017, Dr. McBride has served as provost and executive vice president of academic affairs at Emory University in Atlanta. Dr. McBride also has served as an Asa Griggs Candler Professor of African American studies and an affiliated professor of English at Emory. Before going to Emory, Dr. McBride was the Daniel Hale Williams Professor of African American studies, English, and Performance Studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. There, he also served as dean of the Graduate School and associate provost for graduate education. Earlier in his career, Professor McBride was dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Dr. McBride is the founder and co-editor of the James Baldwin Review. He is co-editor of A Melvin Dixon Critical Reader (University of Mississippi Press, 2006) and author of Impossible Witnesses: Truth, Abolitionism, and Slave Testimony (New York University Press, 2001).
Professor McBride is a graduate of Princeton University in New Jersey, where he majored in English and African American studies. He holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles.
