Jean Bethke Elshtain papers (Ms.2011.039)

Biographical note

Jean Bethke Elshtain (1941-2013) was born in Windsor, Colorado, and grew up in the village of Timnath, Colorado. She received her AB degree from Colorado State University and MA degrees in history from the University of Wisconsin and the University of Colorado. In 1973 she received her PhD in politics from Brandeis University. Her dissertation was entitled “Women and Politics: A Theoretical Analysis.”

Professor Elshtain taught at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst from 1973 until 1988, and at Vanderbilt University from 1988 until 1995. From 1995 until 2013, she was the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Professor Elshtain also taught in the Department of Political Science and the Committee on International Relations.

Among her many honors and activities, Professor Elshtain was a Phi Beta Kappa scholar, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, a Guggenheim fellow, and the recipient of nine honorary degrees. She served as vice president of the American Political Science Association, chair of the Council on Civil Society, chair of the Council on Families in America, and co-chair of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. She was a member of the National Commission for Civic Renewal, the Penn Commission on American Culture and Society and the board of the Illinois Humanities Council. She was a member of the boards of the National Humanities Center, the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University, and the National Endowment for Democracy. In 2006, she was appointed by President George W. Bush to the Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

In addition to being a contributing editor for The New Republic, Dr. Elshtain authored over a dozen books and over 500 essays in scholarly journals and journals of civic opinion. Among her books are: Just War against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World (2003), Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy (2002), New Wine in Old Bottles: International Politics and Ethical Discourse (1998), Real Politics: Political Theory and Everyday Life (1997), Augustine and the Limits of Politics (1996), Democracy on Trial (1995), Women and War (1987), Meditations on Modern Political Thought (1986,) and Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought (1981).

(Biography adapted from http://www.giffordlectures.org/Author.asp?AuthorID=271)