Jeane Kirkpatrick

American ambassador to the United Nations

• Born: November 19, 1926
• Birthplace: Duncan, Oklahoma
• Died: December 7, 2006
• Place of death: Bethesda, Maryland

The first woman to serve as American ambassador to the United Nations, Kirkpatrick also wrote one of the first books on women and U.S. politics, giving that new field scholarly legitimacy.

Early Life

Jeane Kirkpatrick was born Jeane Duane Jordan in Duncan, Oklahoma, a small town forty miles from Texas where her father was an oil business contractor and her mother kept books for the family business. She was born November 19, 1926; her brother Jerry was born eight years later. Like most Oklahomans, the Jordans were Democrats and avid supporters of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Jeane’s grandfather Jordan, a Texas justice of the peace, had a collection of law books that Jeane found fascinating. Jeane’s mother loved to read and inspired her daughter’s lifelong love for reading and writing.

When Jeane was twelve, the family moved to Illinois. By the time she entered high school, Jeane had become an accomplished pianist and had developed a love for literature. She was a straight-A student at Vandalia High School, edited the school newspaper, and acted in plays. In her senior year, she wrote an essay about George Eliot, the British nineteenth century woman writer who used a male name in order to publish her work. Although Jeane’s mother encouraged her daughter to pursue whatever goals she chose, her father wanted her to get married. She chose college.

Jeane embarked on her college years with enthusiasm, focusing on the liberal arts courses at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, then moving on to be graduated in 1948 from Barnard College in New York with a degree in political science. She told friends that her goal in life was to be a spinster teacher at a women’s college. Her favorite author was Virginia Woolf. Then, daring to do what was quite untraditional at the time, she completed a master’s degree from Columbia University and would have continued with doctoral studies had her father not decided it was time for her to support herself. She went to the nation’s capital, political science degrees and references in hand, seeking a job. The doctorate would come later.

Jeane was successful in finding jobs in Washington, D.C., including one at the State Department, where she met Evron Kirkpatrick. She also won a fellowship that enabled her to spend a year studying communism in France, and a research position at George Washington University gave her an opportunity to explore Chinese communism while developing research techniques she would use later in life. At the Economic Cooperation Administration, she helped write a book about the Marshall Plan. Her satisfaction in the work was marred by the author’s failure to acknowledge her contributions.

By 1955, Jeane and Evron Kirkpatrick had been dating for about five years. The two intellectuals married, spending their honeymoon at a political science convention near Chicago. Jeane continued working at George Washington University until the first of her three sons was born in 1956. At that point, based on her motto “refuse to choose,” she combined motherhood with her career.

During the early 1960’s, Kirkpatrick combined her at-home academic work with Democratic Party politics. She and her husband actively supported John F. Kennedy’s candidacy in 1960. In 1962, their youngest son entered nursery school and Kirkpatrick took a part-time teaching position at Trinity College, a small women’s college near Washington, D.C. While teaching there, she completed her first book, The Strategy of Deception: A Study in World-wide Communist Tactics , a collection of essays that analyzed the rise of communist governments outside the Soviet Union.

In 1968, Kirkpatrick completed her Ph.D. at Columbia University. Her dissertation about Perónist politics in Argentina was later published by the MIT Press. Deciding that her children were old enough for her to return to full-time teaching, she applied for and won a position in Georgetown University’s political science department. She was to become only the second woman in the university’s history to receive tenure. It was the beginning of an illustrious career that spanned academia, politics, and journalism.

Life’s Work

Jeane Kirkpatrick’s disillusionment with the Democratic Party began during the late 1960’s. During that period, riots took place following the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy, a 1968 presidential candidate. It was a time of extreme frustration, violence, and urgent demands for change in cities and on campuses around the nation. Some of the worst violence took place at the August, 1968, Democratic Party Convention in Chicago. Students demonstrated at Columbia University, too, making it difficult for Kirkpatrick to deliver her dissertation to Columbia’s library.

Kirkpatrick supported Hubert Humphrey’s Democratic Party candidacy in 1968, which he lost to Richard M. Nixon. In 1972, however, she voted against Democratic challenger George McGovern. In the first of many articles she would write for the journal Commentary, she argued that McGovern represented a set of counterculture values that most Americans, herself included, rejected. Nixon, however, established himself as a supporter of traditional American values and as a fervent opponent of communism. The strategy won him Kirkpatrick’s vote and a landslide victory over McGovern.

Kirkpatrick’s studies of totalitarian governments led her to advocate an anticommunist foreign policy that came to be known as the Kirkpatrick doctrine. It advocated support for right-wing authoritarian leaders if that support would weaken left-wing totalitarianism. It was a policy that the Reagan administration was to apply to its relations with Central and Latin American governments in the 1980’s.

Following the 1972 election, Kirkpatrick became associated with neoconservative thought, which combined opposition to communism and belief in a strong military with liberal views on social issues. Kirkpatrick was very concerned, for example, about the obvious absence of women in government. Her research about that concern led to the publication in 1974 of America’s first major book about women in government. Political Woman gave Kirkpatrick new recognition outside academia and gave legitimacy to the emerging study of women in politics. Acclaimed as an expert on the topic, she was asked to represent the United States at a 1975 International Women’s Year conference held in West Africa.

In 1976, Kirkpatrick wrote The New Presidential Elite: Men and Women in National Politics . Whereas Political Woman had focused on state government, the new book studied women at the national level of government. In addition to being well received, the second book won Kirkpatrick an invitation to join the staff of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), one of Washington’s oldest think tanks. She spent 1977 working full time at the institute, then returned to Georgetown University while continuing part-time work at the AEI. At the institute, Kirkpatrick became the first woman to serve as a senior scholar.

During the Jimmy Carter administration, Kirkpatrick wrote one of her most influential articles for Commentary magazine. In “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” she argued that Carter failed to appreciate communism’s threat and reiterated her belief that the United States sometimes needed to fight totalitarianism by supporting authoritarian regimes. At issue was Carter’s support for leftist Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Carter thought that the Sandinistas were more likely to evolve toward democracy than the corrupt Somoza government was. Kirkpatrick pointed out that no communist system in the past had ever become democratic.

Kirkpatrick’s article won her the admiration of 1980 presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, who made her foreign policy adviser during his campaign and in 1981 appointed her ambassador to the United Nations; she was the first woman to hold the latter position. The president won considerable acclaim for his Reagan doctrine, which was an adaptation of the proposal Kirkpatrick presented in “Dictatorships and Double Standards.”

As head of her country’s U.N. delegation, Kirkpatrick earned a reputation as a capable, if not always popular, negotiator. Her first victory was a difficult compromise she negotiated in response to Israel’s 1981 bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactor. President Reagan called her handling of the incident heroic, and Iraq’s foreign minister was so impressed that he commented, “One Kirkpatrick was equal to more than two men. Maybe three.” That kind of positive response was unusual, however, in the male-dominated United Nations. Ambassador Kirkpatrick often had to cope with her colleagues’ sexism.

In addition to sexism, Kirkpatrick had to deal with anti-American attitudes at the United Nations. She developed a theory about why the United States had had difficulty influencing General Assembly decisions since the 1970’s. In her view, the United States failed to adapt to a system of coalitions that emerged when dozens of newly independent developing nations became United Nations members starting in the 1960’s. Because it refused to participate in any of the new coalitions, the United States lost its ability to influence decisions. During her four years at the United Nations, Kirkpatrick worked to strengthen America’s position there while also focusing on the dangers of communism in Central and Latin America.

Early in 1985, Kirkpatrick resigned her U.N. position to return to family and scholarly responsibilities. She continued her association with Georgetown University and the American Enterprise Institute, resuming a heavy schedule of writing that included books, articles, and a syndicated Los Angeles Times column on post-Cold War developments. She assumed positions on various foreign-policy related associations, including the Defense Policy Review Board and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Only after her U.N. resignation did Kirkpatrick officially change her voting registration to Republican, prompting discussion of her potential as a 1988 presidential candidate. Although she decided not to run, she had the support of an unusual coalition of conservatives, who appreciated her foreign policy positions, and feminists, who appreciated her stand on women’s issues. She had always supported passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, and she generally advocated gender equity.

After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Kirkpatrick became one of the founding members of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonpartisan antiterrorism policy institute, serving on the board of directors until her death. She also served as chair of the U.S. delegation to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in 2003. Kirkpatrick died of heart failure on December 7, 2006. Her last book, Making War to Keep Peace , in which she argues that the war in Iraq was necessary, was published in 2007.

Kirkpatrick received the Medal of Freedom in 1985 and the Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Medal in 1992. Also in 1992, the Council on Foreign Relations created the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Chair in National Security, and Harvard University’s Kennedy School created the Kirkpatrick Chair in International Affairs. Her work in international affairs was acknowledged by awards from foreign heads of states: the Czech Republic State Decoration from Czech Republic president Václav Havel (1998), the Fiftieth Anniversary Friend of Zion Award from Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel (1998), the Presidential Gold Medal from H. E. Arpad Göncz, president of Hungary (1999), and the Grand Officier Du Wissam Al Alaoui Medal from Mohammed VI, the king of Morocco (2000). Other awards include the Defender of Jerusalem Award; the Casey Medal of Honor from the Center for Security Studies; the Morgenthau Award of the American Council on Foreign Policy; the Hubert H. Humphrey Award of the American Political Science Association; the Christian A. Herter Award of the Boston World Affairs Association; the Award of the Commonwealth Fund; the Gold Medal of the Veterans of Foreign Wars; the Humanitarian Award of B’nai B’rith; and the Living Legends Medal from the librarian of the Library of Congress.

Significance

Commenting on her years at the United Nations, Kirkpatrick once pointed out that she had been the only woman in history who sat in regularly at top-level foreign policy-making meetings. Those kinds of meetings, she said, had historically been closed to women in most countries. In her view, it matters very much that women have been so excluded. “It’s terribly important,” she said, “maybe even to the future of the world, for women to take part in making the decisions that shape our destiny.”

As a mother of three sons who grew up during the Vietnam War years, Kirkpatrick came to believe that force should be used to resolve conflict only in the most extraordinary circumstances. She believed fervently in using diplomatic negotiation as the primary method for resolving international disputes, and she will be remembered primarily as the first woman to serve as America’s principal negotiator at the United Nations. Her scholarly work will also stand as a testament to her commitment to the intellectual analysis of international relations.

Kirkpatrick’s advice to women was to “refuse to choose” between motherhood and career. Although many women will not have that luxury, Kirkpatrick is nevertheless an inspiration to those women who want to take control of their own lives so that they can at least expand their range of opportunities. She is especially important as a model for young women who hope to lead productive, satisfying lives.

Bibliography

Crapol, Edward P., ed. Women and American Foreign Policy: Lobbyists, Critics, and Insiders. New York: Greenwood Press, 1987. This scholarly volume analyzes women’s roles in the historical development of U.S. foreign policy. Judith Ewell’s chapter seeks explanations for Kirkpatrick’s limited impact on U.S. foreign policy.

Harrison, Pat. Jeane Kirkpatrick. New York: Chelsea House, 1991. Part of the American Women of Achievement youth series, this short, illustrated biography describes Kirkpatrick’s personal and political life in positive, anecdotal terms.

Kirkpatrick, Jeane. Making War to Keep Peace. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. Kirkpatrick argues that the Iraq War involved a necessary continuation of efforts to stop the spread of Islamic extremism that began with the 1991 Gulf War. Her analysis includes a critique of the United Nations as an actor on the world stage.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Political Woman. New York: Basic Books, 1974. A project of Rutgers University’s Center for the American Woman and Politics, this study of women serving in state governments was the first major scholarly examination of women in politics.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Withering Away of the Totalitarian State and Other Surprises. Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute Press, 1990. In this collection of columns written between 1985 and 1990, Kirkpatrick analyzes post-Cold War events in the Soviet Union.

LeVeness, Frank P., and Jane P. Sweeney, eds. Women Leaders in Contemporary U.S. Politics. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1987. Naomi B. Lynn’s chapter on Kirkpatrick’s rise from political science professor to participant in international politics is based on analysis of Kirkpatrick’s written work, on interviews with Kirkpatrick, and on interviews with people who have known her.