Alan Keyes.
Long Island in New York,[1] Keyes was the fifth child to Allison and Gerthina Keyes, a U.S. Army sergeant and a teacher. Due to his father's tours of duty, the Keyes family traveled frequently. Keyes lived in Georgia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Virginia and overseas in Italy.
After graduation from high school, Keyes attended Cornell University, where he was a member of the Cornell University Glee Club and The Hangovers. He studied political philosophy with American philosopher and essayist Allan Bloom and has said that Bloom was the professor who influenced him most in his undergraduate studies.[1] Later, Keyes received death threats for opposing Vietnam war protesters who seized a campus building. [2]. Keyes claims that a passage of Bloom's book, The Closing of the American Mind, refers to this incident,[3] speaking of an African American student "whose life had been threatened by a black faculty member when the student refused to participate in a demonstration" at Cornell.[4] Shortly thereafter, he left the school and spent a year in Paris under a Cornell study abroad program connected with Bloom.
Keyes was invited to continue his studies at Harvard University, where he resided at Winthrop House, and completed his B.A. degree in government affairs in 1972. During his first year of graduate school, Keyes's roommate was Bill Kristol. In 1988, Kristol ran Keyes' unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign in Maryland.[5]
Keyes earned his PhD in government affairs from Harvard University in 1979, having written a dissertation on Alexander Hamilton and constitutional theory, under Harvey C. Mansfield. Due to student deferments and a high draft number, Keyes was not drafted to serve in Vietnam. Keyes and his family were staunch supporters of the war in Vietnam, where his father served two tours of duty.[6] Keyes was criticized by opponents of the war in Vietnam, but he says he was supporting his father and his brothers, who were also fighting in the war.[7] |
