Heather Mac Donald
| Heather Mac Donald | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
23 November 1956 California, United States |
| Residence | New York City, New York, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Education |
Andover Yale Cambridge Stanford Law School |
| Occupation | Essayist, author |
| Known for | Conservative advocacy |
Heather Lynn Mac Donald (born 1956) is an American political commentator and journalist described as a secular conservative. She has advocated positions on numerous subjects including victimization, philanthropy,immigration reform,crime prevention,racism, racial profiling,rape, politics,welfare, and matters pertaining to cities and academia. She is a Thomas W. Smith Fellow of the Manhattan Institute. In addition, she is a contributing editor to New York's City Journal and a lawyer by training. She has written numerous editorials and is the author of several books. Born in California, she graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover in 1974. In 1978 she graduated from Yale (where she was in Berkeley College). She then attended Cambridge and graduated from Stanford University Law School in 1985.
Mac Donald identifies herself as a secular conservative. She has argued that conservative thinking is superior to liberalism by virtue of the ideas alone, and that religion should not affect the argument and is unnecessary for conservatism. She has criticized the notion of treating boys as a new victim group, and criticized universities for seeking to hire so-called diversity consultants to help boys succeed. She has criticized welfare and blamed philanthropic institutions such as the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation for suggesting that welfare is a right; in particular, she has criticized welfare as having a negative impact in the sense that "generations have grown up fatherless and dependent". She has written that welfare programs serve as a "dysfunction enabler" and that food stamps cause an "unhealthy dependence". She has criticized American immigration policy as "importing another underclass", referring to Hispanics, which has the "potential to expand indefinitely". She has argued that the reduction in crime seen in American cities since 1991 is a result of efficient policing, high incarceration rates, more police officers working, data-driven approaches such as CompStat in which police efforts target high-crime areas, and holding precinct commanders accountable for results. On the subject of terrorism prevention, Mac Donald has defended the Patriot Act and argued a case for secrecy and speed in handling problems as well as the sharing of information between departments within the intelligence community, and advocated that the benefits of government power be balanced against the risks of abuse. She has advocated for religious profiling by the police on the grounds that "you cannot be an Islamic terrorist unless you're a member of the Muslim faith". She has said that the Abu Ghraib prison scandal's fallout was overblown and that opponents of then-President Bush used it to construct an exaggerated "master narrative"; she said that Abu Ghraib was "torture lite" compared with more brutal atrocities such as those of Pol Pot. She defended using torture as an interrogation technique as being necessary in selected circumstances.
...
Wikipedia