Kirkpatrick, Jeane Duane Jordan

▪ 2007

      American political scientist and diplomat (b. Nov. 19, 1926, Duncan, Okla.—d. Dec. 7, 2006, Bethesda, Md.), was foreign policy adviser and UN ambassador (1981–85) under U.S. Pres. Ronald Reagan. Kirkpatrick earned a B.A. (1948) from Barnard College, New York City, and a master's and doctorate from Columbia University, New York City (1950 and 1968, respectively). After working as a research analyst with the Office of Intelligence Research at the U.S. State Department, she studied at the Institute of Political Science in Paris. She served on several Democratic Party committees and worked intermittently for the U.S. Department of Defense before joining the Communism in Government project of the Fund for the Republic Organization (1956–62). In 1967 she joined the faculty of Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., where she became a full professor of political science in 1973. During the 1970s Kirkpatrick increasingly criticized the Democratic Party. Reagan, a Republican, hired her as a foreign policy adviser during his successful 1980 campaign and then nominated her to the UN post. She was given cabinet rank and was a member of Reagan's national security team. Kirkpatrick was known for her anticommunist stance and for her tolerance of authoritarian regimes. She was accused of accepting bribes, falsifying tapes that implicated Soviet forces in the shooting down of a Korean passenger jet, and advocating the dismantling of India, all of which she vehemently denied. In 1985 Kirkpatrick resigned from her position and officially joined the Republican Party. She returned to teaching at Georgetown while also serving as chief foreign policy adviser to Senate Republicans. She became a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, and wrote a syndicated column and several books, including The Withering Away of the Totalitarian State (1990) and Good Intentions (1996). In 1993 she cofounded Empower America, a conservative public-policy organization.

* * *