Early Life and Education
Blumenthal was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Jane M. (née Rosenstock) and Martin Blumenthal, who was the president of a commodities trading firm. His mother was born in Omaha, Nebraska, to a Jewish family that originated in Prussia, and his father was a Jewish immigrant from Frankfurt, Germany. Blumenthal graduated from Harvard College with an A.B. magna cum laude and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. As an undergraduate, he was editorial chairman of The Harvard Crimson. Blumenthal was a summer intern reporter for The Washington Post in the London Bureau. Blumenthal was also selected for a Fiske Fellowship that allowed him to study at Cambridge University, Cambridge England for one year after graduation from Harvard College.
He received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal. While at Yale, he was classmates with future President Bill Clinton and future Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. One of his co-editors on the Yale Law Journal was future United States Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. His brother, David Blumenthal, is a recognized health policy expert and is Chairman of the Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System.
Read more about this topic: Richard Blumenthal
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:
“The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world have grown out of Greece and Rome—not by favor of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, art, and any serious occupation with the things of this world were alike despicable.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical terms.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“I would urge that the yeast of education is the idea of excellence, and the idea of excellence comprises as many forms as there are individuals, each of whom develops his own image of excellence. The school must have as one of its principal functions the nurturing of images of excellence.”
—Jerome S. Bruner (20th century)