From 2001 until her passing in 2006, Jeane Kirkpatrick served on the Board of Directors for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.  She was instrumental in the founding of FDD soon after the al-Qaeda attacks of September 11.

 

Dr. Kirkpatrick was the first woman appointed to serve as Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations and as a member of Ronald Reagan’s Cabinet and National Security Council (1981-85).  She also served as a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (1985-90), the Defense Policy Review Board (1985-93), and chaired the Secretary of Defense Commission on Fail Safe and Risk Reduction (1991-92).

 

For this and related government service, Dr. Kirkpatrick was awarded the Medal of Freedom—the nation’s highest civilian honor—in May 1985, and received her second Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Medal—the highest civilian honor of the Department of Defense—in December 1992.

 

After her service in the U.S. government, she returned to her previous positions as Leavy Professor of Government at Georgetown University and as Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.  Dr. Kirkpatrick also wrote and spoke on a range of issues of foreign policy and security affairs and participated in the ongoing dialogue on public issues.

 

Dr. Kirkpatrick’s published works include:  Good Intentions (2003), The Withering Away of the Totalitarian State (1990); Legitimacy and Force (2 vols.); The Reagan Phenomenon; Dictatorships & Double Standards; Dismantling the Parties:  Reflections on Party Reform and Party Decomposition; The New Presidential Elite; Political Women; and Leader and Vanguard in Mass Society:  A Study of Peronist Argentina.  Dr. Kirkpatrick also authored numerous articles.

 

Dr. Kirkpatrick received an A.B. from Barnard College, M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University, and studied at the Institute de Science Politique in Paris.