Jean Bethke Elshtain is the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political ethics in the University of Chicago Divinity School and co-chair of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Elshtain is a political philosopher who seeks to show the connections between our political and ethical convictions.

Her books include Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social Thought; The Family in Political Thought; Meditations on Modern Political Thought; Women and War; Democracy on Trial (a New York Times "Notable Book" for 1995); Augustine and the Limits of Politics; Real Politics: At the Center of Everyday Life; New Wine in Old Bottles: Politics and Ethical Discourse; and Who Are We? Critical Reflections, Hopeful Possibilities, for which she received the Theologos Award for Best Academic Book 2000 by the Association of Theological Booksellers. In 2002, she published a book, Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy, and an edited volume, The Jane Addams Reader, which won second place for biography in 2002 from Society of Midand Authors. In 2003, she published Just War against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World, which was named one of the best non-fiction books of 2003 by Publisher's Weekly.

Elshtain lectures, both abroad and in the United States, on the topic of whether democracy will prove sufficiently robust and resilient to survive. She has served on the Board of Trustees of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University and is currently on the Board of Trustees of the National Humanities Center and on the Board of Directors of the National Endowment for Democracy. She has been a Phi Beta Kappa lecturer, is the recipient of nine honorary degrees, and received the 2002 Frank J. Goodnow Award, the American Political Science Association's highest award for distinguished service to the profession. In 2003, Professor Elshtain was the second holder of the Maguire Chair in American History and Ethics at the Library of Congress. . . . short bio

Jean Bethke Elshtain is the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political ethics in the University of Chicago Divinity School and co-chair of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Elshtain is a political philosopher who seeks to show the connections between our political and ethical convictions.

Her books include Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social Thought; The Family in Political Thought; Meditations on Modern Political Thought; Women and War; Democracy on Trial (a New York Times "Notable Book" for 1995); Augustine and the Limits of Politics; Real Politics: At the Center of Everyday Life; New Wine in Old Bottles: Politics and Ethical Discourse; and Who Are We? Critical Reflections, Hopeful Possibilities, for which she received the Theologos Award for Best Academic Book 2000 by the Association of Theological Booksellers . . . full bio