Karl Zinsmeister - Early Career

Early Career

Zinsmeister is a graduate of Yale University where he studied history and was a member of Manuscript Society. He also spent time as a special student at Trinity College, Dublin, in Ireland. He won college rowing championships in both the U.S. and Ireland. His first job in Washington was as a legislative assistant to U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a New York Democrat. He was later named DeWitt Wallace Fellow, and eventually appointed to the J. B. Fuqua Chair at the American Enterprise Institute, a prominent Washington DC think tank, where he researched a range of topics extending from social welfare and demographics to economics and cultural trends.

Zinsmeister's writing has been published in periodicals ranging from The Atlantic Monthly to Reader's Digest and the Wall Street Journal. He has been an adviser to many research and policy groups, and has testified before Congress and Presidential commissions numerous times on topics like family policy, daycare, farm subsidies, and the Iraq war. He has made many appearances on television and radio. (See, for instance, multiple appearances contained in C-SPAN archive listed below in external links.) Zinsmeister's work has won several prizes, and been published abroad in Japanese, German, Spanish, Arabic, Polish, Chinese, and many other languages.

He is married and has three children.