President's Medal
Dorothy H. Wickenden ’76
Dorothy Wickenden ’76 is an accomplished journalist and the executive editor of The New Yorker.
During her time at William Smith, she earned High Honors in English and distinction for her baccalaureate essay. She also made dean’s list, won the Chester J. Hampton Price for Excellence in English and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
In the year she graduated, Wickenden attended the Radcliffe Publishing Procedures Course and then moved to Washington D.C. There, she was hired as an editorial assistant for the Shakespeare Quarterly at the Folger Shakespeare Library.
In 1978 she accepted a position as production manager of The New Republic, a magazine of centrist liberal opinion, later becoming managing editor and eventually the executive editor.
In 1988, she began an intensive program of study at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Wickenden left the position to take over as the national affairs editor for Newsweek.
Then in 1995, she took the reins as executive editor of The New Yorker, where her guidance has helped the weekly to gain new audiences and successfully grapple with new issues. At The New Yorker, Wickenden is one of the most influential women in journalism. The New Yorker contains articles on politics, business, literary criticism, fiction, poetry, art, and foreign and domestic policy.
Wickenden has written for The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The Wilson Quarterly. She is the editor of The New Republic Reader: Eighty Years of Opinion and Debate, a compilation of the best work from some of the magazine’s top contributors, including George Orwell, Rebecca West, John Dewey, Arthur M. Schlesinger and many others.
Wickenden has continued to support the Colleges through her close involvement with the student body as a speaker and panelist and as a Board appointed Trustee of the Colleges from 1994 to 1998. She currently serves as a member of the William Smith Centennial Committee. She received the Alumnae Achievement Award in 1999 and in 2006 gave the Colleges’ convocation address.