Midge Decter

Midge Decter (née Rosenthal; July 25, 1927 – May 9, 2022) was an American journalist and author. Originally 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)