Midge Decter
Midge Rosenthal Decter (born July 25, 1927) is an American journalist and author. Life and career. Decter was born into a Jewish family in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She is the daughter of Rose (née Calmenson) and Harry Rosenthal, a sporting goods merchant. She attended the University of Minnesota, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and New York University, but did not graduate from any of them. She was Assistant Editor at "Midstream", then the secretary to the then-editor of "Commentary", Robert Warshow. Later she was the executive editor of "Harper's" under Willie Morris. She then began  working in publishing as an editor at Basic Books and Legacy Books. Her writing has been published in "Commentary", "First Things", "The Atlantic", "National Review", "The New Republic", "The Weekly Standard", and the "American Spectator". Together with Donald Rumsfeld, Decter is the former co-chair of the Committee for the Free World and one of the original champions of the neoconservative movement with her spouse, Norman Podhoretz. She is also a founder of the Independent Women's Forum, and was founding treasurer for the Northcote Parkinson Fund, founded and chaired by John Train. She is a member of the board  of trustees for the Heritage Foundation. She is also a board member of the Center for Security Policy and the Clare Boothe Luce Fund. She is also a member of the Philadelphia Society and she was, for a time, its president. Following a tongue-in-cheek remark by Russell Kirk, the Society's founder, about the prevalence of Jewish intellectuals in the neo-conservative movement, Decter labelled Kirk an anti-Semite. She is also a senior fellow at the Institute of Religion and Public Life. She is one of the signatories to Statement of Principles for the Project for the  New American Century. Decter serves on the national advisory board of Accuracy in Media. In 2008, Midge Decter received the Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. She is the mother of conservative columnists Ruthie Blum and John Podhoretz, children of Norman Podhoretz. She is also the mother, by her first marriage, of Rachel Decter (1951–2013), who married Elliott Abrams in 1980.