Timothy Patrick McCarthy is Lecturer and Director of the Human Rights and Social Movements Program at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

McCarthy graduated from Harvard College and received his Ph.D. in History from Columbia University, where he was a research fellow at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies. An historian of U.S. social movements, McCarthy has published two books — The Radical Reader (New Press, 2003) and Prophets of Protest (New Press, 2006) — and his third book, Protest Nation: The Radical Roots of Modern America, will be published by the New Press this spring.

An award-winning teacher, McCarthy’s courses on “American Protest Literature from Tom Paine to Tupac,” “Stories of Slavery and Freedom in the Modern World,” and “Arts of Communication” are among the most popular and highly rated courses at Harvard. His writings have appeared in The Nation, Boston Globe, Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, Folha, and other publications, and he is a frequent media commentator. McCarthy is also a respected activist and leader in the fields of education, civil rights, and LGBT politics and advocacy. He serves as Academic Director of the Boston Clemente Course in the Humanities, a college humanities course offered free of charge to low-income adults.

As the founding director of Harvard’s Alternative Spring Break Church Rebuilding Trip, for more than a decade, McCarthy has taken groups of students down South to rebuild black churches that have been burned in arson attacks. McCarthy was also a founding member of Barack Obama’s National LGBT Leadership Council, and currently serves on the board of the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus. Last spring, in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of Stonewall, he delivered Harvard’s prestigious Papadopoulos Lecture, entitled “Stonewall’s Children: Life, Loss, and Love after Liberation.” He lectures widely on topics ranging from history and literature to politics and human rights.

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