Alan Keyes

His stay at the UN provoked some controversy, leading Newsday to say "he has propounded the more unpopular aspects of US policy with all the diplomatic subtlety of the cannon burst in Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture."

He also served on the staff of the National Security Council.

At a fundraiser for Keyes's senate campaign, President Reagan spoke of Keyes's time as an ambassador, saying that he "did such an extraordinary job ... defending our country against the forces of anti-Americanism."

Reagan continued, "I've never known a more stout-hearted defender of a strong America than Alan Keyes."

Alan Lee Keyes (born August 7, 1950) is an American politician, political scientist, and perennial candidate who served as the Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs from 1985 to 1987.

Keyes completed his Bachelor of Arts degree in Government in 1972, graduating magna cum laude.

During his first year of graduate school, Keyes's roommate was William Kristol.

A doctoral graduate of Harvard University, Keyes began his diplomatic career in the U.S. Foreign Service in 1979 at the United States consulate in Bombay, India, and later in the American embassy in Zimbabwe.

Keyes earned his PhD. in government from Harvard 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 the Vietnam War.

Keyes and his family were staunch supporters of the war, in which his father served two tours of duty.

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.

A year before completing his doctoral studies, Keyes joined the United States Department of State as a protégé of Jeane Kirkpatrick.

In 1979, he was assigned to the consulate in Mumbai, India.

The following year, Keyes was sent to serve at the embassy in Zimbabwe.

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan appointed Keyes as Ambassador to the United Nations Economic and Social Council.

Among the U.S. delegation to the 1984 World Population Conference in Mexico City, Keyes was selected by Reagan as deputy chairman.

Keyes was appointed Ambassador to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations by President Ronald Reagan and later as President Reagan's Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, a position he held from November 13, 1985, until November 17, 1987; in his capacities as a U.N ambassador, Keyes was involved in the implementation of the Mexico City Policy.

In 1985, he was appointed Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations, a position he held until 1987.

In 1987 Keyes was appointed a resident scholar for the American Enterprise Institute.

His principal research for AEI was diplomacy, international relations, and self-government.

Aside from his Presidential runs, he was the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in Maryland against Paul Sarbanes in 1988 and Barbara Mikulski in 1992, as well as in Illinois against Barack Obama in 2004.

Keyes lost all three elections by wide margins.

In 1988, Kristol ran Keyes's unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign in Maryland.

Following government service, Ambassador Keyes was President of Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) from 1989 to 1991, and founded CAGW's National Taxpayers' Action Day.

In 1991, he served as Interim President of Alabama A&M University, in Huntsville, Alabama.

Keyes hosted a radio call-in show, The Alan Keyes Show: America's Wake-Up Call, from 1994 until 1998 on WCBM.

The show was briefly simulcast by National Empowerment Television.

A member of the Republican Party, Keyes sought the nomination for President of the United States in 1996, 2000, and 2008.

In 2002, he briefly hosted a television commentary show on the MSNBC cable network, Alan Keyes Is Making Sense.

He is a long time columnist for World Net Daily.

Born at the St. Albans Naval Hospital (now a VA Community Living Center) in St. Albans, Queens, Keyes is the fifth child of mother Gerthina (Quick) and father Allison L. 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 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.

Keyes has stated that he received death threats for opposing Vietnam war protesters who seized a campus building.

Keyes has stated that a passage of Bloom's book, The Closing of the American Mind, refers to this incident, 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.

Shortly after this incident occurred, Keyes left Cornell and spent a year in Paris under a Cornell study-abroad program connected with Bloom.

Keyes continued his studies at Harvard University, where he resided in Winthrop House.