William Burnett Benton

William Benton (center) with former Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey and Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (1970)

William Burnett Benton (born April 1, 1900 in Minneapolis , Minnesota , † March 18, 1973 in New York City ) was an American politician ( Democratic Party ) who represented the state of Connecticut in the US Senate .

After training at a military academy in Faribault and at Carlton College in Northfield , Benton enrolled at Yale University in 1918 , where he graduated in 1921. He then worked for an advertising agency in New York until 1929, before setting up his own business with his partner Chester Bowles in the Benton & Bowles agency . In 1932 he moved to Norwalk , Connecticut. From 1937 to 1945, Benton was Vice President of the University of Chicago .

On 31 August 1945 he took office as Secretary of State for Public Affairs ( Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs ) in the US State Department in which he held until September 30 1947th During this time he was involved in the organizational structure of the UN .

In 1949 Benton was appointed acting successor to the resigned Connecticut US Senator, Raymond E. Baldwin . The term of office began on December 17, 1949; in the by-election on November 7, 1950, he then finally prevailed against the Republican Prescott Bush , father of the future US President George Bush . During his tenure in the Senate, which lasted until January 3, 1953, he introduced a resolution aimed at expelling Joseph McCarthy from the Senate. The re-election for his Senate seat lost William Benton in 1952; In 1958 he failed in the primary to Thomas J. Dodd . He later became the US Ambassador to UNESCO in Paris from 1963 to 1968.

Benton spent much of his life working for the Encyclopædia Britannica , of which he was Chairman of the Board and Editor from 1943 until his death in 1973. In 1968 he set up the Benton Foundation , a non-profit organization whose main focus should be on making media content usable for educational purposes. He was also a member and delegate of numerous international conferences and commissions.

Web links

• William Burnett Benton in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)