Joseph A. McPhillips III

Who was Joseph A. McPhillips III?

Joseph A. McPhillips III, headmaster of the American School of Tangier, died on June 11, 2007 at his home on the Old Mountain Road, in Tangier, Morocco. He was 70 years old.

McPhillips was born in 1937 in Mobile, Alabama and graduated from Phillips Academy, Andover and Princeton University. McPhillips came to Tangier in 1962 to teach English literature at the American School, established in 1950, and the oldest American school in Morocco. In 1973, he succeeded Omar Pound as headmaster, beginning a tenure that would span four decades and define the institution's standards and values.

McPhillips told the Washington Post, in a 2003 interview, that the American School was "the Andover of the Mediterranean. We provide an old-fashioned education. Students rise when adults come into the room. They read Lord Jim and Julius Caesar. There's not a lot of ancillary nonsense in the curriculum." As well as a rigorous and passionate teacher and administrator, McPhillips was a poet and prolific and gifted theater director. His annual American School plays became a Tangier tradition, and since 1964 he personally directed more than 20 of them.