Jean Bethke Elshtain was named Visiting Distinguished Professor of Religion and Public Life at the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. She holds the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Chair in Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
Professor Elshtain taught at the University of Massachusetts for 15 years before joining the faculty at Vanderbilt University in 1988. She was the first woman to hold an endowed chair in history at Vanderbilt. She joined the faculty at the University of Chicago in 1995.
Among her books are Sovereignty: God, State, and Self (Basic Books, 2008) and Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World (Basic Books, 2003).
Dr. Elshtain is a graduate of Colorado State University. She holds a Ph.D. in politics from Brandeis University.