William Kristol

Biography

William Kristol (born December 23, 1952 in New York City) is an American political analyst and commentator. He is the founder and editor of the political magazine The Weekly Standard, a regular commentator on the Fox News Channel, and an Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times. Kristol is associated with a number of conservatively aligned think tanks: he cofounded the neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC) in 1997 with Robert Kagan, he is a member of the board of trustees for the free-market Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and he is a member of the Policy Advisory Board for the neoconservative Ethics and Public Policy Center. Kristol has also been an attendee at Bilderberg Group conferences. Kristol was born to Irving Kristol, one of the founders of the neoconservative movement, and Gertrude Himmelfarb, a scholar of Victorian era literature. He graduated in 1970 from The Collegiate School, a preparatory school for boys located in Manhattan. In 1973, Kristol received an A.B. from Harvard, graduating magna cum laude in three years. In 1976, he worked as deputy issues director for Patrick Moynihan's New York Democratic primary campaign for a U.S. Senate seat. Kristol received a Ph.D. in government, also from Harvard, in 1979. During his first year of graduate school, Kristol shared a room with a fellow government doctoral candidate, Alan Keyes, whose unsuccessful 1988 Maryland Senatorial campaign against Paul Sarbanes Kristol would later run in. Kristol is married to Susan Scheinberg.