Timothy Patrick McCarthy, PhD

Dr. Timothy Patrick McCarthy is an award-winning scholar, educator, and activist who has taught at Harvard University since 1998. At the Graduate School of Education, he is Core Faculty in the Equity and Opportunity Foundations Curriculum, Online Master’s Program in Education Leadership, and Higher Education Concentration. At the Kennedy School of Government, where he was the first openly gay faculty member, he is Faculty Chair of the Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Program.

 

A historian of politics and social movements, he is the author or editor of five books, most recently Reckoning with History: Unfinished Stories of American Freedom. The adopted only son and grandson of public school teachers and factory workers, Dr. McCarthy has devoted his life to public service and social justice. As founding Director of Harvard’s Alternative Spring Break Church Rebuilding Program, he spent fifteen years (1997-2013) organizing hundreds of students to help rebuild Black churches destroyed in racist arson attacks throughout the United States.

 

A respected leader in the LGBTQ+ community, he was a founding member of President Barack Obama’s National LGBT Leadership Council, gave expert testimony to the Pentagon Comprehensive Working Group on the repeal of "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell," was part of the first-ever LGBTQ+ delegation from the US to Palestine and Israel, and was a 2023 honoree in Portraits of Pride, a public art installation that showcases "leaders and luminaries of the LGBTQ+ community in Massachusetts."