Kunin, Madeleine May
KUNIN, MADELEINE MAY
KUNIN, MADELEINE MAY (1933– ), U.S. politician, governor of Vermont. Kunin was born in Zurich, Switzerland. Her mother was Swiss and her father, who died when Kunin was three, was born in Germany. Amid the rising threat of Nazism and fear of a German invasion, Kunin's mother was able to obtain United States visas for her children and herself and the family arrived in New York City in June 1940. Kunin graduated from the University of Massachusetts in 1956 with a B.A. in history and went on to receive an M.S. from the Columbia University School of Journalism. In the 1950s Kunin worked as a journalist in Burlington, Vermont, and as a tour guide at the United States Pavilion at the Brussels World Fair. During the 1960s, Kunin was a homemaker with an active volunteer life in the fields of health, child welfare, and Democratic Party politics. Inspired by the women's movement, Kunin sought public office and was elected to the Vermont House of Representatives in 1972. During a second House term, Kunin became minority whip, the first woman elected to a legislative leadership position in Vermont. Kunin was elected lieutenant governor in 1978 and became the leader of Vermont's Democrats in 1980; she became Vermont's first female governor in 1984. As governor, Kunin promoted environmental programs, the establishment of a family court, and land-use planning legislation. She strongly supported women's reproductive rights and encouraged young women to enter politics. Kunin always stressed her status as an immigrant and a Jew. In her autobiography, Living a Political Life, she wrote, "On some level that I do not yet fully understand, I believe I transformed my sense of the Holocaust into personal political activism. This was the source of my political courage. I could do what the victims could not: oppose evil whenever I recognized it. The United States of America would protect me. I lived in a time and place when it was safe for a Jew to be a political person, to speak, to oppose, to stand up." In 1993, Kunin, who had declined to run for a fourth term as governor, was appointed deputy secretary of education in the first Clinton term. She became United States ambassador to Switzerland, the country of her birth, in 1996. Kunin returned to Vermont in 2000; in 2003 she was named distinguished visiting professor at the University of Vermont. Her books include The Big Green Book: A Four Season Guide to Vermont (1976) and Living a Political Life (1994).
bibliography:
Current Biography Yearbook (1987); Who's Who of American Women (2003); Working Woman (July 1986).
[Libby White (2nd ed.)]