In Memoriam: Jean Bethke Elshtain, 1941-2013

Jean Bethke Elshtain, the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at University of Chicago Divinity School, has died from complications of a cardiac incident earlier this summer. She was 72 years old.

Professor Elshtain joined the faculty at the Divinity School in 1995. Earlier in her career she taught at the University of Massachusetts and Vanderbilt University, where she was the first woman to hold an endowed professorship.

She was the author of many books including Democracy on Trial (Basic Books, 1994), Women and War (Basic Books, 1987), and Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought (Princeton University Press, 1981).

A native of Windsor, Colorado, Dr. Elshtain was a graduate of Colorado State University. She held master’s degrees from the University of Wisconsin and the University of Colorado and a Ph.D. from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.