Midge Decter (née Rosenthal; July 25, 1927 – May 9, 2022) was an American journalist and author. Originally a liberal, she was one of the pioneers of the neoconservative movement in the 1970s and 1980s. She was a critic of feminism and the women's liberation movement. Her family was middle-class and Jewish. She initially identified as a liberal on the political spectrum.
Career
Decter was assistant editor at Midstream, before working as secretary to the then-editor of Commentary, Robert Warshow.
Together with Donald Rumsfeld, Decter was the co-chair of the Committee for the Free World, an anti-communist organization.
Decter was arguably the leading female anti-feminist in the United States prior to Phyllis Schlafly's rise to prominence. She was also a senior fellow at the Institute of Religion and Public Life. Decter served 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.
Public lectures
In 1995, Decter delivered the ninth Erasmus Lecture, titled A Jew in Anti-Christian America, sponsored by First Things magazine and the Institute on Religion and Public Life. In her address, Decter reflected on the cultural and moral landscape of late twentieth-century America, examining tensions between Jewish identity, secularism, and the country’s Christian heritage. The lecture was widely noted for its candid discussion of faith and public life from a Jewish perspective.
Personal life
Decter married her first husband, Moshe Decter, in 1948.
- The Liberated Woman and Other Americans (1970)
- The New Chastity and Other Arguments Against Women's Liberation (1972)
- Liberal Parents, Radical Children (1975)
- An Old Wife's Tale: My Seven Decades in Love and War (2001)
- Always Right: Selected Writings of Midge Decter (2002)
- Rumsfeld : A Personal Portrait (2003)