Jon Utley

Jon Basil Utley


Jon Basil Utley

Jon Basil Utley was born in Moscow, Russia, in 1934 and emigrated to America in 1939. He is Associate Publisher of The American Conservative, a Robert A. Taft Fellow for International and Constitutional Studies at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and a Fellow with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. He has written widely on third-world development economics and foreign policy.

He is a graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, with language studies in Germany, France, and Cuba. He worked from 1956-75 in South America, starting in the insurance business (American International Group in Cuba, Venezuela, and Colombia). He later founded the Bogota Bulletin, Colombia's first English-language news publication, and managed a mutual fund and insurance sales organization in South America. He also worked as a foreign correspondent in South America based in Peru for the Journal of Commerce and Knight-Ridder newspapers.

He was Associate Editor of The Times of the Americas for 12 years and a commentator on the Voice of America from 1985-2003. He has written for the Harvard Business Review, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, National Review, Human Events, and the Miami Herald and is listed in Who’s Who in the World & Who’s Who in America. He also worked in the oil development business in Pennsylvania and in real estate development in Washington, D.C. In 1990 he was a cofounder of the Committee to Avert a Mid-East Holocaust, which opposed the attack on Iraq.

He is now Chairman of Americans Against World Empire, a.k.a. ConservativesForPeace.com. He has served on the Board of Directors or Advisory Councils of many leading conservative and libertarian organizations, including Accuracy in Media, Conservative Caucus, Council for Inter-American Security, Ethics & Public Policy Center, Reason Foundation, and Solidarity America. His articles have been widely disseminated. He is fluent in French, German, and Spanish.

In 2004 he visited Vorkuta, the northernmost former concentration camp in European Russia, where his father, Arcadi Berdichevsky, was executed in 1938.. He has written the account of researching the archives and his visit to Vorkuta and the Perm concentration camp museum in the Urals. It is accessible by searching for Vorkuta Perm on Google.

In 2011, Jon Utley hosted a panel discussion at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on the new book, Rabbi Outcast: Elmer Berger and American Jewish Anti-Zionism. The book, which discusses his mother, British-born journalist Freda Utley, was written by Jack Ross. An excellent article on the event,"The World for Israel or Jews for the World," was written by W. George Krasnow and published at antiwar.com. The forum can be seen at the Rabbi Outcast YouTube channel.

Links to some of Jon Basil Utley's articles:

Evangelicals, Ron Paul and War
(in Russian)

Tribes, Veils and Democracy

Proportional Representation Creates Dysfunctional Democracies

The Cost of Boots on the Ground in Iraq

America Is Not Rome

Why We Can't Win Against Guerillas

Obama and the Alternative Energy Fiasco

The Second Children's Crusade

Understanding Dictatorships:
From Iran to Cuba,
the question of legitimacy is paramount

Alaskan Oil Abundance Versus
Washington's Wasted Billions:
The case for new oil drilling in
Alaska and off America's coasts

Sun Tzu and America's Way of War

A Foreign Policy For The Tea Party

CATO Institute Daily Podcast with Jon Utley, "Modern Conservatism and the Impulse to War." October 3, 2012 (14 minutes)

Follow-Up to Jon Utley's Podcast.
Chris Preble, Vice President for Defense
and Foreign Policy Studies at the CATO Institute discusses "War Cheerleaders Have a Poor Track Record" and Jon Utley's October 3, 2012 comments on
CATO Institute Daily Podcast
October 4, 2012

 

Archives:

RETURN TO THE GULAG

Jon Utley's search for his father

 
 

Jon Utley was two years old in Moscow when his father, Arcadi Berdichevsky, a Russian trade official, was sent to a labor camp by the Soviet secret police. His mother, Freda Utley, escaped with Jon to England and then to America.

In 2004 and 2006, Utley, a well-known journalist, embarked upon a search to learn of his father's fate. This documentary traces Utley's journey through former labor camps and cities in northern Russia and his final uncovering of the horrible truth at the dreaded camp city of Vorkuta within the Artic Circle.

Directed by John J. Michalczyk, Return to the Gulag is a small but revealing window into Russia's turbulent 1930s.

Reason.tv is proud to present this Etoile Production, which was funded by The Freda Utley Foundation and the Jacques Salmanowitz Program For Moral Courage in Film at Boston College. Thanks also to the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation.

For more information about the documentary, visit http://fredautley.com/Berdichevsky.htm.

For a DVD version of this program ($15 donation, plus shipping), please go to the website of The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation or email vocmemorial@aim.com.

Approximately 28 minutes. ©2008 The Freda Utley Foundation.

 

• August 1, 2012 – The Only Way to Cut Defense Spending is by Sequestration

• April 10, 2012 – What Americans Think — When Asked the Right Questions

• March 5, 2012 – War, Social Values, and Ron Paul

• March 31, 2011 – The Case for Increasing Domestic Oil Production

• March 8, 2011 – Seven Reasons Why the U.S. Has Trade Deficits

• February 17, 2011 – A Foreign Policy For The Tea Party

• November 11, 2010 – Job-Killing Environmentalists

• October 14, 2010 – Joseph Sobran, Antiwar Prophet, RIP

• August 24, 2010 – Iraqi Constitution Doomed to Failure

• August 17, 2010 – Confronting Washington’s Job-Killers

• July 15, 2010 – The Government’s Catastrophic Response to Oil Disaster

• April 2, 2009 – Taking on the Military-Industrial Complex:
A 10-Point Plan for the Right and the Left

• January 23, 2009 – How Bin Laden Bankrupted America: The Five Ways



© 2012 Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation