Dr. Elisabeth Griffith
Dr. Elisabeth Griffith, Headmistress of The Madeira School since 1988, is an historian, educator, and author.
Dr. Griffith received a Ph.D. in history from The American University and was named the University’s outstanding graduate student in 1982. In 1992, she received the University’s Lodestar Alumni Award. She holds an M.A. from Johns Hopkins University and a B.A. from Wellesley College. Dr. Griffith has taught women’s history at The American University and the National Cathedral School in Washington, D.C., and has lectured widely. She has been a Kennedy Fellow at Harvard. She belongs to the honorary Society of American Historians and is listed in the Directory of American Scholars. She served as a consultant for Ken Burns’ PBS documentary, “Not for Ourselves Alone,” which was based on her biography of suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
In Her Own Right (Oxford University Press, 1984), Dr. Griffith’s first book, is a comprehensive biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the nineteenth-century reformer who initiated the women’s suffrage movement in America. Praised by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., as a “fine biography, combining careful scholarship with lively writing [which] splendidly restores this bold, intelligent, engaging woman to 20th century America,” the book was chosen as one of “the 15 best books of 1984” and was named one of the “Books of the Century” by the editors of The New York Times Book Review.
At the time of her appointment as Headmistress, Dr. Griffith was working on a major historical study of the Equal Rights Amendment from 1923 to 1983. Her research was funded by the prestigious J. Franklin Jameson Fellowship, awarded jointly by the American Historical Association and the Library of Congress. She has also reviewed books for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and professional journals and has appeared on Frontline, Nightline, and The Diane Rehm Show.
In 1989 Dr. Griffith received the Junior League of Washington’s highest honor, the “Sally Carruthers Spirit of Volunteerism” award, for her efforts in membership diversification. She currently serves on the boards of WETA and Project Match, and the advisory board of The White House Project, a bipartisan effort to create support for a woman president. She was the first woman to serve on the Camp Dudley YMCA Board of Managers. Dr. Griffith has served on the boards of the Women Fellows Advisory Committee of the Kennedy Institute at Harvard, the National Coalition of Girls’ Boarding Schools, the Association of Independent Schools of Greater Washington, the National Association of Principals of Schools for Girls, the Executive Committee of Head Mistresses of the East. and the Women’s Campaign Fund, as chair.
In honor of her tenure, the Madeira Board of Directors created the Elisabeth Griffith Women’s Leadership Lecture Series, which was launched on May 10, 1999, by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. In 2005 she was awarded The Washington Post's “Distinguished Educational Leadership Award” for her creation of an exceptional educational environment at Madeira.
The Madeira School, an independent residential and day school for girls in grades 9-12, has been recognized by the United States Department of Education as one of the nation’s outstanding schools. Founded in 1906, the school enrolls 320 students from 21 states, plus the District of Columbia, and 18 countries. Madeira, located on a wooded campus along the Potomac River in McLean, Virginia, 12 miles from downtown Washington, D.C., offers a college preparatory curriculum and a unique co-curriculum of internships.
Dr. Griffith was married for many years to John Deardourff, a well-known political consultant and media strategist, who died in December 2004. She has four Deardourff offspring and four grandchildren.
