Jeane J. Kirkpatrick (born 1926) was a professor, a Democrat turned Republican, and the first woman to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Jeane Jordan Kirkpatrick was born November 19, 1926, in Duncan, Oklahoma. As a child she was raised in small towns in both Oklahoma and Illinois. She attended college in New York, graduating from Barnard College in 1948, and completed her masters degree in 1950 at Columbia University. She married Evron Kirkpatrick in 1955 and started teaching at Georgetown University in 1967. She completed her dissertation on the Peronist movement in Argentina and received her Ph.D. from Columbia in 1968. The Kirkpatricks raised three sons.

A Democrat Frustrated with Liberals

Kirkpatrick was long an active member of the Democratic Party. She and her husband both worked as supporters of Hubert Humphrey throughout his political career. She became frustrated with the liberal approach to public policies and with the Democratic Party...