Katherine Kersten

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Katherine Kersten is a conservative columnist who wrote for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

A graduate of Notre Dame and Yale universities, Kersten began her career as a financial analyst for a Chicago bank.^[1] She later worked as a budget planner for the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After moving to the Twin Cities, she studied at and graduated from University of Minnesota Law School and began practicing law in Minnesota.^[1] After the second of her four children was born in 1985, she quit this job to become an opinion writer and commentator. She was a founding member of the think tank Center of the American Experiment and has written for publications such as Christianity Today and the Wall Street Journal.^[1]

Kersten worked^[2] for the Minneapolis Star Tribune^[1] as a columnist.

Kersten has criticized the University of Minnesota and other institutes of higher learning for what she sees as a liberal bias.^[3] She supports ROTC programs at the U of M.^[4] Before it closed in 2011, she was a strong critic of Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, which she argued was a religious Muslim school that should not have been funded by taxpayer dollars.^[5]

Kersten opposes gay marriage, which she has called a "perilous, slippery slope". She argues that "the primary purpose of marriage is to ensure the best environment for rearing the children born of male-female sexual acts" and that legalization of gay marriage may eventually lead to the legalization of polygamy.^[6] She also opposes affirmative action for racial minorities and compared President Clinton's handling of the issue to "the Phil Donohue school of policy making. It may make us feel good about ourselves, but it's unlikely to make much of a dent in the problems we face."^[7]

Kersten has identified herself as a conservative feminist, arguing that women have suffered injustice and still do, and that the sexes must be equal, though she also argues that perfection is humanly unattainable.^[8][9]

Kersten criticized then U.S. Representative Keith Ellison's calls for a United States Department of Peace, arguing that the idea was unrealistic in a violent world.^[10]

Kersten has a very favorable view of Wal-Mart and its impact on society, defending it against critics who argue that it hurts small business.^[11]

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