Jean Bethke Elshtain

Jean Bethke Elshtain (January 6, 1941 – August 11, 2013) was an American ethicist, political philosopher, and public intellectual. She was the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics in the University of Chicago Divinity School with a joint appointment in the department of political science.

Elshtain was born on January 6, 1941 in Windsor, Colorado and grew up in Timnath, Colorado. She was from a Lutheran background. She received an AB Colorado State University and master's degrees in history from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Colorado. She received her Ph.D. from Brandeis University in Massachusetts in 1973, writing her dissertation on 'Women and Politics: A Theoretical Analysis'.

Elshtain taught from 1973 to 1988 at the University of Massachusetts and then from 1988 to 1995 she taught at Vanderbilt University as the first woman to hold an endowed professorship. Elshtain was selected as a Phi Beta Kappa scholar, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, a Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of nine honorary degrees. In 1995 she became a professor at University of Chicago. She was the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School, and a contributing editor for The New Republic. She was also a Visiting Distinguished Professor of Religion and Politics at Baylor University.