William Bennett 威廉·贝内特

William John "Bill" Bennett (born July 31, 1943) is an American conservative pundit, politician, and political theorist, who served as Secretary of Education from 1985 to 1988 under President Ronald Reagan. He also held the post of Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under George H. W. Bush. In 2000, he co-founded K12, a publicly traded online education company. Life and career Bennett was born in Brooklyn, the son of Nancy (née Walsh), a medical secretary, and F. Robert Bennett, a banker. He moved to Washington, D.C., where he attended Gonzaga College High School. He graduated from Williams College, where he was a member of the Kappa Alpha Society, and went on to earn a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in Political Philosophy. He also has a J.D. from Harvard Law School. From 1979 to 1981, he was the executive director of the National Humanities Center, a private research facility in North Carolina. In 1981 President Reagan appointed him to chair the National Endowment for the Humanities, where he served until Reagan appointed him Secretary of Education in 1985. Reagan originally nominated Mel Bradford to the position, but due to Bradford's pro-Confederate views Bennett was appointed in his place. This event was later marked as the watershed in the divergence betweenpaleoconservatives, who backed Bradford, and neoconservatives, led by Irving Kristol, who supported Bennett. It was in 1986 that Bennett switched from the Democratic to the Republican party. Bennett resigned from this post in 1988, and later was appointed to the post of Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy by President George H. W. Bush. He was confirmed by the Senatein a 97-2 vote. Bennett is a member of the National Security Advisory Council of the Center for Security Policy (CSP). He was co-director ofEmpower America and was a Distinguished Fellow in Cultural Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation. Long active in United States Republican Party politics, he is now an author, speaker, and, from April 5, 2004 through April 1, 2016, the host of the weekday radio program Morning in America on the Dallas, Texas-based Salem Communications. In addition to his radio show, he was the Washington Fellow of the Claremont Institute. Further work at the Claremont Institute included his role as Chairman ofAmericans for Victory Over Terrorism (AVOT). He was also a political analyst for CNN until his termination in 2013. He is a Senior Advisor to Project Lead The Way, one of the nation’s leading providers of training and curriculum to improve STEMeducation in American schools; he is on the advisory board of Udacity, Inc., Viridis Learning, Inc. and the board of directors ofVocefy, Inc. and Webtab, Inc. He is also the Chief Education Advisor to Beanstalk Innovation, an international education company. Bennett and his wife, Mary Elayne "Elayne" Glover, have two sons, John and Joseph. Elayne is the president and founder of Best Friends Foundation, a national program promoting sexual abstinence among adolescents. He is the brother of Washington attorneyRobert S. Bennett. Political viewpoints Bennett tends to take a conservative position on affirmative action, school vouchers, curriculum reform, and religion in education. As Education Secretary, he asked colleges to better enforce drug laws and supported a classical education. He frequently criticized schools for low standards. In 1988 he called the Chicago public school system "the worst in the nation." He coined the term "the blob" to describe the state education bureaucracy, a term which was later taken up in Britain by Michael Gove. Bennett is a staunch supporter of the War on Drugs and has been criticized for his views on the issue. On Larry King Live, he said that a viewer's suggestion of beheadingdrug dealers would be "morally plausible." He also "lamented that we still grant them [drug dealers] habeas corpus rights." In 1995, he teamed up with C. Delores Tucker to create advertising to target Time Warner's lack of regulation of gangsta rap and its supposed glorification of violence and denigration of women. Bennett is a member of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and was one of the signers of the January 26, 1998 PNAC Letter sent to President Bill Clinton urging Clinton to remove Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein from power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William Bennett