Early Life and Education
Ashcroft was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Grace P. (née Larsen) and James Robert Ashcroft. His father was a minister in an Assemblies of God congregation, served as president of Evangel University (1958–74), and jointly as President of Central Bible College (1958–63). He later served as president of Valley Forge Christian College. His mother was a housewife whose parents immigrated from Norway.
Ashcroft went to school in Springfield, Missouri. He attended Yale University, where he was a member of Sigma Tau Gamma and the St. Elmo Society, graduating in 1964. He received a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Chicago School of Law (1967).
After law school, Ashcroft briefly taught Business Law and worked as an administrator at Southwest Missouri State University.
During the Vietnam War, he received six student draft deferments and one occupational deferment because of his teaching work.
Read more about this topic: John Ashcroft
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:
“We are living now, not in the delicious intoxication induced by the early successes of science, but in a rather grisly morning-after, when it has become apparent that what triumphant science has done hitherto is to improve the means for achieving unimproved or actually deteriorated ends.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“For universal love is as special an aspect as carnal love or any of the other kinds: all forms of mental and spiritual activity must be practiced and encouraged equally if the whole affair is to prosper. There is no cutting corners where the life of the soul is concerned....”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“... the whole tenour of female education ... tends to render the best disposed romantic and inconstant; and the remainder vain and mean.”
—Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)