John McCardell, Jr.

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John Malcolm McCardell, Jr. is the president emeritus and a professor of history at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont. He retired as president in June, 2004, after serving thirteen years as the fifteenth president of the college. An anonymous donor of $50 million in the spring of 2004 asked that Middlebury's science center, Bicentennial Hall, be renamed John M. McCardell, Jr. Bicentennial Hall.

McCardell served at Middlebury during a period in which about half of the school's 23,000 living alumni have graduated. A 1971 graduate of Washington and Lee University, he did his graduate work at Johns Hopkins and then at Harvard where he received his Ph.D. in history in 1976. That same year he joined the history department at the distinguished Vermont liberal arts college.

Following his retirement from the presidency, McCardell returned to the faculty at Middlebury where he continues to teach history.

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[edit] On Underage Drinking

McCardell wrote an op-ed in The New York Times in 2005 saying, "the 21-year-old drinking age is bad social policy and terrible law". [1] He subsequently founded, and now serves as the 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.

[edit] Source Information

Much of the biographical information on McCardell comes from the Middlebury College Website.

[edit] See Also

[edit] External links

Preceded by
Timothy Light		 President of Middlebury College
1991–2004		 Succeeded by
Ronald D. Liebowitz
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