Meet the New Editor of MODERN AGE: Daniel McCarthy

Modern Age is thrilled to announce the appointment of Daniel McCarthy as its new editor. This accomplished editor and writer aims to lead Modern Age to new heights of influence, just as he did during his successful tenure as editor of The American Conservative.

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), which publishes Modern Age, chose McCarthy after a national search this summer. He becomes the seventh editor in Modern Age’s sixty-year history, succeeding Peter Augustine Lawler, who passed away unexpectedly in May.

We are delighted to have Dan as editor of Modern Age. He engineered a remarkable turnaround during his six years as editor of The American Conservative, and he has the talent, experience, and vision to make Modern Age the preeminent forum for debate and discussion of the most important ideas of concern to conservatives of all stripes.

Dan McCarthy is director of the Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship Program at the Fund for American Studies. From 2010 through 2016 he served as editor of The American Conservative. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, USA Today, The Spectator, the National Interest, Reason, Modern Age, and other publications. Dan has been interviewed on NPR, the BBC, Fox Business, and many other outlets. As an undergraduate at Washington University in St. Louis, he edited a student newspaper sponsored by ISI’s Collegiate Network.

Dan is excited to take Modern Age to new levels of influence. “I am honored, and more than a little humbled, to be Modern Age’s editor,” he said. “The journal has never been more salient or more necessary: conservatives, and indeed Americans of all dispositions, are in search of a philosophical anchor in these times that have left all the old assurances of politics behind. Peter Lawler set high standards for Modern Age and extended its reach before his work was tragically cut short. I am eager to build on Peter’s excellent work.”

Dan joins a Modern Age editorial team that includes literary editor Samuel Goldman, assistant professor of political science and executive director of the Loeb Institute for Religious Freedom at George Washington University, and poetry editor James Matthew Wilson, associate professor of religion and literature at Villanova University and winner of the 2017 Hiett Prize in the Humanities.

Founded in 1957 by the great Russell Kirk, Modern Age has long been “the principal quarterly of the intellectual right,” in the words of George H. Nash, the leading historian of American conservatism. Modern Age applies timeless principles to the specific conditions and crises of our age—to what Kirk, in the inaugural issue, called “the great moral and social and political and economic and literary questions of the hour.” Sixty years later, the journal remains true to that approach. University of Oklahoma scholar Wilfred M. McClay recently called Modern Age “required reading for those who want to engage conservative thought at a high level.”

Be sure to check out the brand-new issue of Modern Age, which offers a fascinating look at the relationship between Christianity and politics, from the Protestant Reformation to the Benedict Option. Dan and Sam have also assembled a wonderful Fall Books roundup. 

If you do not already receive Modern Age, please be sure to subscribe here. You don’t want to miss what Dan has in store for readers as he positions this distinguished publication to play a much larger role in the national debate.