Allan David Bloom (1930-1992) was an American political philosopher, professor, and author. An advocate of the Western philosophical tradition, he translated classic authors such as Plato and Rousseau, but he was best known for his criticism of American higher education and what he felt was the decline of liberal education.

Allan David Bloom was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on September 14, 1930, to Allan and Malvina (Glasner) Bloom, both of whom were social workers of Jewish descent. The parents nurtured their son's intellectual curiosity and encouraged him to excel educationally. When the family moved to Chicago in 1946, 15-year-old Allan was immediately impressed with the University of Chicago and, as he later said, "somehow sensed that I had discovered my life" (Closing of the American Mind, 1987). At the age of 16 he entered that university's special program for gifted high school students where he studied the classics of Western literature in a...