Guyanese-born Neville Linton was appointed Editor-in-Chief of the McGill Daily in the 1957-1958 academic year.
Linton was an exceptionally bright and engaged student. The year before he became the first Black McGillian to head a student publication, he served as the News Editor of the McGill Daily, worked on the annual handbook for entering students, and helped the McGill Debating team secure victory at the 1957 MIT Debating Conference.
Under Linton’s leadership, the McGill Daily operated under a “philosophy of dissent.” Rather than simply disseminating campus news, the editorial prioritized opinionated reporting. In the 1958 yearbook, the Daily’s writers stated:
At a university in the most important formative years of life, we feel that a campus paper should offer challenge, divergent opinions, aggressive enquiry, and an urgent probe for truth and justice. We think we have done this.
Linton graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce in 1958, and went on to complete an MA at Harvard. An impressive career followed, including teaching appointments at universities in Canada and the Caribbean. Linton garnered significant experience in international affairs, and served as the UK Chair of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative in the early 2000s.