William John Bennett was born on July 31,1943 and is an American conservative politician and political commentator who served as secretary of education from 1985 to 1988 under President Ronald Reagan.
24 Facts About William Bennett
2.
William Bennett's family moved to Washington, DC, where he attended Gonzaga College High School.
3.
William Bennett graduated from Williams College in 1965, where he was a member of the Kappa Alpha Society, and received a Ph.
4.
William Bennett has a JD from Harvard Law School, graduating in 1971.
5.
In May 1979, William Bennett became the director of the National Humanities Center, a private research facility in North Carolina, after the death of its founder Charles Frankel.
6.
Reagan originally nominated Mel Bradford to the position, but due to Bradford's pro-Confederate views William Bennett was appointed in his place.
7.
In May 1986, William Bennett switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party.
8.
In September 1988, William Bennett resigned as secretary of education, to join the Washington law firm of Dunnels, Duvall, William Bennett, and Porter.
9.
In 2008, William Bennett became the host of a CNN weekly talk show, Beyond the Politics.
10.
William Bennett has been moderating The Wise Guys, a Sunday night show on Fox News, since January 2018.
11.
William Bennett writes for National Review Online, National Review and Commentary, and is a former senior editor of National Review.
12.
William Bennett is a member of the National Security Advisory Council of the Center for Security Policy.
13.
William Bennett was co-director of Empower America and was a Distinguished Fellow in Cultural Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
14.
William Bennett is an advisor to Project Lead The Way and Beanstalk Innovation.
15.
William Bennett is on the advisory board of Udacity, Inc.
16.
In 2017, William Bennett launched a podcast, The Bill William Bennett Show.
17.
William Bennett tends to take a conservative position on affirmative action, school vouchers, curriculum reform, and religion in education.
18.
William Bennett is a staunch supporter of the War on Drugs and has been criticized by some for his views on the issue.
19.
William Bennett is a member of the Project for the New American Century and was one of the signers of the January 26,1998 PNAC Letter sent to President Bill Clinton, which urged Clinton to remove Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein from power.
20.
In 2003, it became publicly known that William Bennett - who had spent years preaching about family values and personal responsibility - was a high-stakes gambler who lost millions of dollars in Las Vegas.
21.
Joshua Green of the Washington Monthly said that William Bennett failed to denounce gambling because of his own tendency to gamble.
22.
Also, William Bennett and Empower America, the organization he co-founded and headed at the time, opposed an extension of casino gambling in the United States.
23.
William Bennett said that his habit had not put himself or his family in any financial jeopardy.
24.
In 1967, as a graduate student, William Bennett went on a single blind date with Janis Joplin.