Norman Podhoretz

Norman Harold Podhoretz, a towering and often contentious figure in American political thought whose editorial leadership at Commentary magazine helped shape the neoconservative movement, died December 16, 2025, in New York City at the age of 95.

Born January 16, 1930, Podhoretz grew up in New York City, in Brooklyn's Brownsville neighborhood. He was the son of Jewish immigrants.

Podhoretz attended Boys High School in Brooklyn's Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood and earned his undergraduate degree in English literature from Columbia University in 1950. He also studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and received degrees from Clare College, Cambridge University.

After serving in the U.S. Army in the 1950s, Podhoretz began his career as a promising young literary critic, contributing to Commentary by the early '50s. By 1960, at just 30 years old, he was named editor-in-chief of Commentary, the influential magazine of the American Jewish Committee. Under his stewardship until 1995, he transformed it from a relatively modest journal into a leading platform for neoconservative thought.

His editorial tenure helped launch and elevate the careers of figures such as Jeane Kirkpatrick and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, whose essays in Commentary contributed to their later roles in public service.

Podhoretz authored numerous books, most notably his 1967 memoir "Making It," which candidly recounted his rise from a Brooklyn upbringing to the center of American intellectual life.

His political evolution from liberal literary critic to one of the nation's most vocal conservative commentators marked much of his career. Often provocative, he pressed for assertive U.S. foreign policy and became a leading voice against Soviet détente and later, in the post-9/11 era, global radical Islam.

In 2004, Podhoretz received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honor, from President George W. Bush in recognition of his influence on public discourse.

Podhoretz was married to Midge Decter, a fellow conservative writer and editor, from 1956 until her death in 2022. They had two children together: John Podhoretz, a conservative columnist and editor, and Ruthie Blum, a journalist. He also was stepfather to Rachel Decter Abrams, who predeceased him.

In announcing his death, his son said his father was "a man of great wit and a man of deep wisdom and he lived an astonishing and uniquely American life."

By Legacy News Staff

(Image: Bernard Gotfryd via Wikimedia Commons)