Biography of Midge Decter

Midge Decter
New York, New York

Midge Rosenthal attended the University
of Minnesota, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and New York
University.  Her first job was secretary to the editor of Commentary,
the intellectual magazine published by the American Jewish Committee. She later
worked as an assistant editor at Midstream magazine, managing editor at Commentary,
editor at Harper’s Magazine, and was an editor at Legacy Books and at
Basic Books. She also served as executive director of the Committee for a Free
World, an anticommunist organization disbanded after the collapse of the Berlin
Wall. She is the author of several books, The Liberated Woman & Other
Americans (1970); The New Chastity and Other Arguments Against Women’s
Liberation (1972); Liberal Parents, Radical Children (1975), and Rumsfeld:
A Personal Portrait (2003). She is on the board of directors of the Heritage
Foundation and a senior fellow at the Institute of Religion and Public Life. Her
second husband, Norman Podhoretz, is editor of Commentary. Decter has
four children.

Decter’s incisive writing on a range
of topics has proven invaluable to the conservative movement. A former editor at
Basic Books, her writing has graced the pages of Commentary, First
Things, Harper’s and a number of other publications. A Senior
Fellow at the Institute on Religion and Public Life in New York City, Decter
previously served as Executive Director of the Committee for a Free World, a
powerful voice for anti-communism that she voluntarily disbanded after the fall
of the Berlin Wall and collapse of Soviet communism. 

Midge’s speech at the 40th Anniversary
Gala Meeting of The Philadelphia Society, May 2, 2004: "Foreign Policy: The
Next Forty Years"
http://www.townhall.com/phillysoc/decterchicago.htm

In this excerpt from her new memoir, An Old Wife’s
Tale: My Seven Decades in Love and War, Midge Decter describes her final
break with liberalism:
http://www.hooverdigest.org/021/decter.html