Kirkpatrick, Jeane Jordan (1926-2006), served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (UN) from 1981 to 1985. She was the first woman to head the U.S. delegation to the UN. When President Ronald Reagan appointed her to this post, she was a professor of political science at Georgetown University. After resigning from the UN position in 1985, Kirkpatrick resumed her teaching career at Georgetown.
Although named to the UN post by a Republican, Kirkpatrick was a long-time Democrat. She held several important positions in the Democratic Party during the 1970’s. In 1972, she and other leading Democratic scholars and officeholders formed the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, which worked to strengthen the party. She became critical of U.S. foreign policy during the late 1970’s, however, and she joined Reagan’s group of advisers for the 1980 presidential campaign.
Jeane Duane Jordan was born on Nov. 19, 1926, in Duncan, Oklahoma. She graduated from Barnard College and earned master’s and doctor’s degrees in political science at Columbia University. She married Evron M. Kirkpatrick, also a political scientist, in 1955. She joined the Georgetown faculty in 1967. She also served as a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, a center for studies of government policy. She wrote several books, including Political Woman (1974) and The New Presidential Elite (1976). Making War to Keep Peace was published in 2007, after her death on Dec. 7, 2006.
