Former UN Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick is Dead at 80

The American Enterprise Institute is reporting that former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane J. Kirkpatrick died yesterday at her home in Bethesda, Maryland. She was 80.

Kirkpatrick was the first female ambassador to the UN and was appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1981. She was a member of the President’s cabinet and a member of the National Security Council.

Kirkpatrick was born in Duncan, Oklahoma and graduated from Barnard College in New York in 1948. She earned a doctorate in political science in 1968 from Columbia University. As a Democratic Party activist in the 1970s, she worked on the campaigns for Hubert Humphrey when he ran for Vice President and again as President. She later became disillusioned with the Democratic Party during the Jimmy Carter administration and became the foreign policy advisor to Carter’s rival, Ronald Reagan, when he campaigned for President in 1980. Kirkpatrick did not become a Republican until 1985.

She taught at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and became a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she authored a number of significant works devoted to conservative issues.

Kirkpatrick died in her sleep at home and the cause of her death was not immediately known.