McConnell Center Director

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Gary L. Gregg, PhD, directs the McConnell Center, a nonpartisan program at the University of Louisville that attracts the best and brightest students from around Kentucky and prepares them for careers in effective leadership. Since 2000, he has also held the Mitch McConnell Chair in Leadership at the University of Louisville.

An award-winning political science teacher and expert on the U.S. presidency, Gregg has written or edited more than a dozen books on topics related to the American presidency, the Constitution, and George Washington. He is currently completing a biography of our first president.

As director of the McConnell Center, Gregg has organized hundreds of educational events on campus for students and the community. He has hosted such dignitaries as U.S. Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Hillary Clinton, CIA Directors Gina Haspel and David Petraeus, Vice President Joe Biden, Supreme Court Justices John Roberts, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas and more than 50 other top national leaders. He has organized conferences, published academic books and studies and has been a guest speaker on dozens of other campuses including West Point, Princeton University and the U.S. Naval Academy.

Under his leadership, the McConnell Center has grown from a small, local scholarship program into a nationally recognized “oasis of excellence in higher education.” The Center now hosts programs for undergraduate McConnell Scholars, high school students, U.S. history and civics teachers, the general public and the U.S. Army. In 2014 he pioneered a new type of “broadening” education for the U.S. military, and the Center continues to host an annual 30-day “Strategic Broadening Seminar” for promising young Army leaders. He has also built partnerships with West Point, the Naval Academy, the U.S. Army War College and Harvard University’s Institute of Politics.

A Pennsylvania native, Gregg earned his bachelor's degree from Davis and Elkins College in West Virginia and received his master's and doctoral degrees in political science from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

Select Honors and Awards

• George Washington Award for Excellence in Communication, Valley Forge Foundation
• Richard and Helen DeVos Freedom Center Leadership Award, awarded by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Hotel DuPont, Wilmington, Delaware, May 1, 2008.
• Honorary Life-Time Member, Association of Chinese Political Studies (USA), awarded spring 2006 at "Chinese in the 21st Century" conference, Louisville, KY.
• Graduate Alumni Lecture Series Award, Graduate School of Miami University, Fall 2003.
• Commissioned a Kentucky Colonel, April 2001 by Governor Paul Patton.
• Davis & Elkins College Outstanding Young Alumnus for 1994.

Research and Teaching Interests

• The political thought of C.S. Lewis
• George Washington and the formation of his character
• The presidency and public politics
• Representation and American political institutions
  • Political and constitutional thought at the American founding
  • Statesmanship

Education

• PhD, Miami University (Political Science, 1994)
• MA, Miami University (Political Science, 1991)
• BA, Davis & Elkins College (History and Political Science, 1990), cum laude
• Additional Graduate Study: University of Notre Dame, Seminar for the Study of Western Institutions, Pan-American Institute for Political Studies, 1991
• Honorary Degree: Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Davis & Elkins College, West Virginia, May 2007

Select Publications

In addition to numerous monographs and journal articles, Gregg has published more than a dozen books including:

• Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet, editor (McConnell Center Books, 2023)
• Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, co-editor with N. Susan Laehn (McConnell Center Books, 2021)
• Reflection & Choice—The Federalists, the Anti-Federalists and the Debate that Defined America, co-editor with Aaron Coleman (McConnell Center Books, 2000)