Charles Krauthammer

Charles Krauthammer

Charles Krauthammer was an American political columnist. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1987. His weekly column was syndicated to more than 400 publications worldwide. He was a leading conservative voice and proponent of U.S. military and political engagement. He died on June 21, 2018, following a battle with cancer, aged 68.

About Charles Krauthammer in brief

Summary Charles KrauthammerCharles Krauthammer was an American political columnist. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1987. His weekly column was syndicated to more than 400 publications worldwide. He was a leading conservative voice and proponent of U.S. military and political engagement on the global stage. He died on June 21, 2018, following a battle with cancer, aged 68. He is survived by his wife, Anne, and their three children, all of whom were born in the United States. He also leaves behind a son, Charles Jr., and a daughter, Anne-Marie, who were both born in New York City and moved to Montreal, Canada, at the age of five. He had been diagnosed with secondary mania, a form of manic depression, during his time as a psychiatrist in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1985, he began writing a weekly editorial for The Washington Post, which earned him the 1987 Pulitzer Prize. In 1990, he became a weekly panelist for the PBS news program Inside Washington. In August 2017, he stopped writing his column and serving as a Fox News Channel contributor, due to his battle withcancer. His death was announced by his family on Wednesday, June 20, 2018. His funeral was held at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, New York, on Thursday, June 21. His son Charles Jr. was born on March 13, 1950, in the New York city borough of Manhattan. His father was from Bolekhiv, Ukraine, and his mother, Thea, was from Antwerp, Belgium. He attended McGill University in Montreal, graduating in 1970 with first-class honours in economics and political science.

He then studied as a Commonwealth Scholar in politics at Balliol College, Oxford, before returning to the US to attend medical school at Harvard. In 1975, he was paralyzed from the waist down after a diving board accident that severed his spinal cord at cervical spinal nerve 5. He spent 14 months recovering in a hospital. In 1978, he joined the Carter administration as a director of psychiatric research. In 1980, he served as a speechwriter to Vice President Walter Mondale. In 1983, he started writing essays for Time magazine, including one on the Reagan Doctrine, which brought him national acclaim. In 1989, he defined the U. S. role as the sole superpower in the Unipolar Moment in his essay on the Berlin Wall. He later became a panelist on PBS’ Inside Washington from 1990 until it ceased production in December 2013. In 2010, he left the PBS program to focus on his political punditry for Fox News. In 2011, he returned to Inside Washington as a regular panelist and contributing editor to The Weekly Standard. In 2012, he wrote an essay for The New Republic on the Iran-Contra scandal. In 2013, he co-authored the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. In 2014, he published a book on the American and Neurology Board of Psychiatry, which was published by the American Psychiatric Association.