AEI senior fellow Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, who joined the Institute in 1978, died on December 7, 2006. As a young political scientist at Georgetown University, Kirkpatrick wrote the first major study of the role of women in modern politics, Political Woman, which was published in 1974. Her work on the McGovern-Fraser Commission, which was formed in the aftermath of the Democratic Party's tumultuous 1968 convention and changed the way party delegates were chosen, led to Dismantling the Parties: Reflections on Party Reform and Party Decomposition, which AEI published in 1978. Yet it was an essay written for Commentary magazine in 1979, "Dictatorships and Double Standards" (later expanded into a full-length book), that launched her into the political limelight. In the article, Kirkpatrick chronicled the failures of the Carter administration's foreign policy and argued for a clearer understanding of the American national interest. Her essay matched Ronald Reagan's instincts and convictions, and when he became president, he appointed her to represent the United States at the United Nations. Ambassador Kirkpatrick was a member of the president's cabinet and the National Security Council. The United States has lost a great patriot and champion of freedom, and AEI mourns our beloved colleague.
[More on the life and work of Jeane J. Kirkpatrick]
AEI Scholars Comment on the Loss of their Colleague
"With the death of Jeane Kirkpatrick this country has lost one of its most effective champions, and I have lost a dear friend. Others will speak of her public service, and there’s much to be said about it, but on that subject I shall only say that her career should remind us that this country had enemies then, as well as now, domestic as well as foreign, and that she faced them down, one and all. But I want to speak mainly about our friendship.
"She pronounced a moving benediction at Georgetown on my retirement from teaching, and she warmly welcomed me on my return fulltime to AEI; she counseled me when I took a minor UN position; she defended my friends when they were in need of friends; she taught me that, like her mentors Hubert Humphrey and Henry 'Scoop' Jackson, Republicans could also be generous in spirit; and she revealed much about herself in her most beautiful of eulogies on her friend, Ann Crutcher. Now, and not the least of her gifts, she leaves me with the sweetest of memories."
--Walter Berns, AEI resident scholar and professor emeritus at Georgetown University
"I first began working with Jeane Kirkpatrick when she was President Reagan’s ambassador to the United Nations and was immediately struck by her intensity, intelligence, and courage.
"She was comfortable standing up in the United Nations and representing America against all comers. She was comfortable arguing in the Reagan Cabinet against those who did not understand the need to defeat Communism.
"In some ways Jeane Kirkpatrick rivaled Margaret Thatcher as one of the most effective women warriors I have ever seen.
"I was delighted years later to be able to work with her at the American Enterprise Institute where her wisdom and her memories of what had worked for Ronald Reagan helped me understand how we could apply Reagan’s principles in defeating our enemies today. She was enormously influential in shaping Winning the Future and shaping the work I’ve being doing on the Defense Policy Board.
"Everyone who knew Jeane had their life enriched by her and all of us will miss her deeply."
--Newt Gingrich, AEI senior fellow and speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives (1995-1998)
"For her magnificent contribution to the triumph of freedom over totalitarianism, the entire world owes a lasting debt to Jeane Kirkpatrick. Beyond that, I owe her other debts. As a leader of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, for which I was a young staffer, she showed me how an otherwise powerless intellectual could influence political life on the strength of knowledge and insight. She inspired my emulation and changed my career. She made this possible by helping to get me a fellowship for doctoral study at Georgetown, where she was my teacher and adviser until higher duties called. Later, her sponsorship brought me to AEI. She never asked anything in return for all her kindness to me. She commanded my enduring admiration and deep affection. I will miss her sorely."
--Joshua Muravchik, AEI resident scholar and author of The Future of the United Nations.
"Jeane Kirkpatrick had been failing for some weeks, with many ailments including heart, a loss of desire to eat, dislike of medications. At last, not long after she had reached the grand age of 80, on December 7, this sturdy Oklahoman succombed quietly in her bed, one of her best friends at her side.
"Jeane Kirkpatrick was loved by Soviet dissidents whose cause she so bravely championed. In Jeane Kirkpatrick, Israel had one of its firmest and warmest friends. In Afghanistan under Soviet occupation, her name came to be revered. In Nicaragua a large unit of freedom fighters against the Communist regime called themselves 'the Kirkpatrick brigade.' In Angola, in Chile, in the Philippines, in Poland, Hungary, and Cuba--everywhere that people suffered under oppression, and found few others to champion their dignity and aspirations and human worth, the name 'Jeane Kirkpatrick' brought cheer.
"In the United States, though, we may have had more need of Jeane Kirkpatrick than anyone else did. After four years of a foreign policy described by Margaret Thatcher as 'Lose a country, gain a restaurant,' Jeane Kirkpatrick insisted on respect for the United States at the United Nations, on straightforwardedness in talking to this nation and about this nation, and on integrity in matching words to actions. No more of this double dealing--with one hand begging the United States for aid, money, food, aircraft, military intervention,--and with the other hand slapping the cheeks of this nation in public, and (until Jeane came along) with impunity. Jeane said to the United Nations: 'Play it straight, and play it fair.' To the San Francisco Democrats (no longer her kind of Democrats) she said: “They always blame America first!'
"Where Jeane grew up, the corn was as high as an elephant’s eye, and the sky above was vast and free and inspiriting. She grew up with dignity and freedom in her bones. When I hear the words of our national anthem, 'The land of the free, and the home of the brave!' I think of Jeane. Freedom--for others too--is what she lived for. She fought to make others free, and she was very, very brave. She took much abuse. She thought it worth it."
--Michael Novak, AEI's George Frederick Jewett Scholar and ambassador to the United
Nations Human Rights Commission (1981-1982)
[See also Michael Novak's remembrance of Jeane Kirkpatrick on FirstThings.com.]
"I knew Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick since 1972 when she was member of the of the original board of directors of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, a 'ginger group' formed to get the Democratic Party away from it leftward tropism, then called 'McGovernism.' A few years later we both arrived at AEI.
"She was an American original.
"She had three sons as a relatively young woman and was, accordingly, able to a pursue her remarkably productive career in her chosen field of political science--decidedly not of the ivory-tower variety--for many decades.
"She was fluent in a number of languages. She was highly cultured woman. She was a great cook.
"She lived a full life."
--Ben J. Wattenberg, AEI senior fellow and host of PBS's Think Tank.
Landmarks of Kirkpatrick's Life
In 1985, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick was awarded the Francis Boyer Prize. Her Francis Boyer Lecture was entitled "The United States and the World."- Her landmark essay, "Dictatorships and Double Standards," was expanded into a full-length book.
- In the late 1980s and early 1990s, her newspaper commentary and columns on the worldwide collapse of Communism was collected in The Withering Away of the Totalitarian State . . . and Other Surprises, published by the AEI Press in 1990.
- In 1985, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.
- Her other awards include the Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Medal, the Pentagon's highest civilian honor; the Thomas Garrigue Masaryk Order, the Czech Republic's state decoration; the Hungarian Presidential Gold Medal; the Fiftieth Anniversary Friend of Zion award from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel; the Grand Officier Du Wissam Al Alaoui Medal, presented by the king of Morocco; the French Political Prize; and the Living Legends Medal, presented by the librarian of Congress.
Books by Jeane J. Kirkpatrick
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Saturday, November 21, 2009
