Jean Bethke Elshtain was born on 6 January 1941 in Windsor, Colorado. Known for her work on individualism, communal responsibility, and Augustan, she advised George W. Bush on the response to the September 11 attacks. Lecturer at the University of Massachusetts in 1973, she joined Vanderbilt University in 1988 and was the first woman to hold an endowed professorship. In 1995, she moved to the University of Chicago, retiring as Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the Divinity School. Elshtain was also Visiting Distinguished Professor of Religion and Politics at Baylor.
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, she was also a Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of nine honorary degrees. She was Vice President of the American Political Science Association, Chair of the Council on Civil Society, and Chair of the Council on Families in America. Notable works include Public Man, Private Woman (1981), Women and War (1987), Democracy on Trial (1995), Augustine and the Limits of Politics (1996), and Just War against Terror (2003).
