Lecturers at the Jefferson Educational Society

William Kristol is editor of The Weekly Standard, which, together with Fred Barnes and John Podhoretz, he founded in 1995. Kristol regularly appears on Fox News Sunday and on the Fox News Channel.

Before starting The Weekly Standard, Kristol led the Project for the Republican Future. Prior to that, Kristol served as Chief of Staff to Vice President Dan Quayle during the Bush administration and to Secretary of Education William Bennett under President Reagan. Before coming to Washington in 1985, Kristol taught politics at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

In 1973, Kristol received an A.B. from Harvard, graduating Magna Cum Laude in three years. In 1976, he worked for Daniel Patrick Moynihan's successful U.S. Senate campaign, serving as Deputy Issues Director during the Democratic primary. Kristol received a Ph.D. in government from Harvard in 1979. During his first year of graduate school, Kristol shared a room with fellow government doctoral candidate Alan Keyes. Kristol was the campaign manager for Keyes' unsuccessful 1988 Maryland Senatorial campaign against Paul Sarbanes.

After teaching political philosophy and American politics at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Kristol went to work in government in 1985, serving as chief of staff to Secretary of Education William Bennett during the Reagan administration, and then as Chief of Staff to the Vice President under Dan Quayle in the George H. W. Bush administration. The New Republic dubbed Kristol "Dan Quayle's brain" upon being appointed the Vice President's chief of staff.

He served as chairman of the Project for the Republican Future from 1993 to 1994, and as the director of the Bradley Project at the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in Milwaukee in 1993. In 1993, he rose to fame as he led conservative opposition to the Clinton health care plan.

In 2003, Kristol and Lawrence F. Kaplan wrote, "The War Over Iraq: America's Mission and Saddam's Tyranny", in which the authors analyzed the Bush Doctrine and the history of US-Iraq relations. In the book, Kristol and Kaplan provided support and justifications for war in Iraq. He also served as a foreign policy advisor for Senator John McCain's presidential campaign

Kristol was born on December 23, 1952 in New York City, into a Jewish family. His father, the late Irving Kristol, served as the managing editor of Commentary magazine and has been described as the "godfather of neoconservatism". His mother, Gertrude Himmelfarb, was a scholar of Victorian era literature. He graduated in 1970 from The Collegiate School, a preparatory school for boys. Since 1975, he has been married to Susan Scheinberg, with whom he has three children.^[4] His son-in-law is writer Matthew Continetti.