Condoleezza Rice 1954–

National Security Advisor

At a Glance…

Selected Writings

Sources

Born into a family of educators, Condoleezza Rice became an educator, but she did not limit her teaching to a school setting. In the late 1980s, as director of Soviet and East European affairs on the National Security Council, she explained world events to the president of the United States; in the early 1990s, she was elected to the board of directors of several multinational corporations. Rice taught political science at Stanford University, and is considered a leading expert on Soviet and East European politics and military affairs. She is called upon by many in public office and private business to put her academic knowledge to practical use.

Rice grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. She traced her interest in political science to her parents’ preoccupation with politics and the political discussions held at home. Academic achievement was also important to her from the beginning. Her parents taught her she could, as she told Ebony, “do and be whatever I wanted,” and she succeeded at a variety of activities from an early age. Her mother gave her piano lessons; she was playing Bach and Beethoven almost before her feet reached the pedals. She studied figure skating. She took the most challenging classes at school and excelled.

le.875qEntering the University of Denver at the age of fifteen, Rice first majored in piano performance but switched to political science when she realized she would never be a great pianist. She graduated magna cum laude when she was nineteen. She then when on to receive her master’s degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1975, later re-turning to Denver for her doctorate in international studies.

In 1981 Rice started teaching political science at Stanford University and gradually became well known for her expertise in Soviet affairs. In 1984 she won a teaching award at Stanford. She was a fellow at the Hoover Institute, an internationally-known think tank at Stanford, during the 1985-86 academic year. Her books The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army. 1948-1983 and The Gorbachev Era were published in 1985 and 1986, respectively. In 1987 she served as an advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on strategic nuclear policy and briefed air force generals on strategy and force posture in the Soviet military. The following year, at the invitation of the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Unior, she traveled to Bulgaria to speak

At a Glance…

Born November 14, 1954; raised in Birmingham, AL; daughter of John Wesley and Angelena Ray Rice. Education: University of Denver, 8.A. (magna cum laude), 1974, Ph.D., 1981; University of Notre Dame, MA, 1975. Politics: Republican.

Career: U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC, intern, 1977; Rand Corporation, intern, 1980; Stanford University, Stanford, CA, assistant professor of political science, 1981-89, associate professor, professor, 1991-93, provost, 1993-99; National Security Council, Washington, DC, director of Soviet and East European Affairs, 1989-91; George W. Bush presidential campaign, national security consultant, 2000; National Security Council, national security adviser, 2001-.

Memberships: Member of board of directors of Chevron and Transamerica Corporation.

Awards: Award for excellence in teaching, Stanford University, 1984; fellow of the Hoover Institute, 1985-86; Ford Foundation fellow; fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Addresses: Office— National Security Council, White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., 20504.

to Soviet officials and diplomats on arms-control policy.

At the personal request of Brent Scowcroft, assistant to the president for national security affairs, Rice was named director of Soviet and East European affairs on the National Security Council in 1989. In this capacity she analyzed and explained to President George Bush the events of international importance occurring in the region. She helped Bush prepare for and participate in his super-power summit meetings with then-Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and other top officials in Malta, Washington, D.C., Paris, and Helsinki, Finland. In Malta, she sat at the bargaining table with Bush and Secretary of State James Baker. At the 1990 summit in Washington, D.C., she provided background and analysis in daily meetings and was one of only a handful of senior aides who attended exclusive evening dinner meetings.

The purpose of the summit meetings was to achieve a solid global peace plan. Much of the discussions centered on arms control, expansion of trade, and problems relating to the gradual freedom movement affecting border countries in the Soviet Union. With her expertise in Soviet politics, armaments and military affairs, Rice was in an excellent position to prepare Bush for his meetings. The hardest part of her work, she said in an interview with San Francisco: The Magazine, was remaining objective and “keeping the analyst in me separate from my political views.”

Rice told Ebony, it was a “truly amazing time to be working in the White House,” because so much was changing in the Eastern-bloc countries. The Berlin Wall, which was erected between East and West Berlin by the Communist government of East Germany in 1961, had come down, allowing citizens of the East to move freely to the West. And shortly thereafter, the world witnessed the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

In 1991 Rice left Washington to return to the academic life at Stanford University in California, but since then her expertise has been sought and her presence felt by many. After Senator Pete Wilson was elected governor of California in 1990, her name was circulated as his possible replacement in Congress; she had been asked to run for Congress before but had declined. Rice continued to publish her scholarly work and also wrote editorials for magazines such as Time, and newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times. And the Neu; York Times frequently sought her opinion and commentary on foreign affairs.

In 1991, the 37-year-old Rice was appointed by Governor Wilson to a bipartisan committee to draw new state legislative and congressional districts in California. She was the youngest member chosen, and among her colleagues on the committee were several retired state justices, including a 75-year-old former supreme court justice. Wilson told the Los Angeles Times, “All [members] have certain attributes in common. All are distinguished scholars. All are leaders in their fields, known for impartiality and devoted to the truth.” Others agreed with Wilson’s assessment of Rice’s achievements. In May of 1991, Chevron elected her to their 12-member board of directors, and in October of 1991, Transamerica Corporation did the same. She was also named as provost of Stanford and co-authored a book on the reunification of Germany.

Rice grew up in the segregated South and remembers the days when blacks were turned away from restaurants and hotels; she also vividly recalls the civil rights wars that changed some of the inequities. She survived those troubled times because of her family’s “strength of community and strength of spirit,” as she told Katherine Fong of San Francisco: The Magazine.

While she has been fortunate, she also has suffered her share of overt and covert racism. In high school, despite her academically-oriented curriculum and high grades, her counselor told her she wasn’t college material.“I had not done very well on the preliminary SAT exam,” she said in an interview with Ebony. “I remember thinking that the odd thing about it was that [the counselor] had not bothered to check my record. I was a straight-A student in all advanced courses. I was excelling in Latin. I was a figure skater and a piano student. That none of that occurred to her I think was a subtle form of racism. It was the problem of low expectations [for blacks],” she recalled.

An unfortunate public incident in 1990 brought Rice more public attention than her position as director on the National Security Council. At the San Francisco airport where she was accompanying a party of Soviet officials—wearing the appropriate White House identification—a secret-service agent ordered her to stand behind the security lines. When she tried to explain that she was with the group, he shoved her.

While the press made much of the incident, speculating on possible racist origins, Rice downplayed the event.“I was really taken aback at the press it received,” she told Ebony. “To my mind, it was a relatively minor incident and I quickly reported it to the head of the Secret Service who was appalled and promised to look into it. I sort of chalked it up to a field agent who isn’t involved in the activities that often and was overly zealous. What I didn’t feel from him was any racial hostility…. I didn’t write it off to race or gender… but just that he was rude,” she continued.

After many years in academia, Rice was asked to help George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign. When he was elected, he named her as the national security advisor in his cabinet. Both she and Colin Powell made history as the first African Americans named as national security advisor and secretary of state, respectively. Rice is also the first woman named to the post.

As the first black woman to hold her post in an area still very much dominated by white males, Rice has also endured her share of sexism. She sometimes counters sexist remarks by referring to other powerful women. “Haven’t they hearc of [former prime minister of England] Margaret Thatcher, [former prime minister of India] Indira Gandhi, or Cleopatra [the Queen of Egypt] for that matter?” she mused in Jet. She told Ebony that sexism “usually comes in the line of ’How’d you end up doing this?’” Her most successful weapon against the racism and sexism she has encountered is her own intelligence and ability.

Selected Writings

The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army: 1948-1983, Princeton University Press, 1985.

(Editor with Alexander Dallin) The Gorbachev Era, Stanford Alumni Association, 1986.

(co-author with Philip Zelikow) Germany Unified and Europe Transformidd: A Study in Statecraft, 1996.

Contributor to periodicals, including Journal of International Affairs, Studies in Comparative Communism, Time, World Politics, and Current History.

Sources

American Political Science Review, September 1996.

Ebony, October 1990.

Jet, April 17, 1989; June 18, 1990; June 25, 1990; November 19, 1990; December 17, 1990.

Los Angeles Times, June 7, 1990; May 8, 1991; July 27, 1991; September 16, 1991.

New York Times, August 21, 1991; December 16, 1991.

San Francisco: The Magazine, June 1988. Wall Street Journal, May 14, 1991; October 9, 1991.

Washington Post, November 30, 1990; March 25, 1991; August 18, 1991.

Wichita Eagle, January 23, 2001.

—Robin Armstrong and Ashyia N. Henderson

Condoleezza Rice 1954–

Political scientist, foreign policy strategist

At a Glance…

Appointed to the National Security Council

Returned to Career in Academics

Rice, Racism, and Sexism

Selected writings

Sources

As a child of educators, she became an educator, but Condoleezza Rice does not limit her teaching to a school setting. In the late 1980s, as director of Soviet and East European affairs on the National Security Council, she explained world events to the president of the United States; in the early 1990s, she was elected to the board of directors of several multinational corporations. Rice teaches political science at Stanford University, is a leading expert on Soviet and East European politics and military affairs, and is called upon by many in public office and private business to put her academic knowledge to practical use.

Rice grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. She traces her interest in political science to her parents’ preoccupation with politics and the political discussions held at home. Academic achievement was also important to her from the beginning. Her parents taught her she could, as she told Ebony, “do and be whatever I wanted,” and she succeeded at a variety of activities from an early age. Her mother gave her piano lessons; she was playing Bach and Beethoven almost before her feet reached the pedals. She studied figure skating. She took the most challenging classes at school and excelled.

Entering the University of Denver at the age of fifteen, Rice first majored in piano performance but switched to political science when she realized she would never be a great pianist. She graduated magna cum laude when she was nineteen. She then when on to receive her master’s degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1975, later returning to Denver for her doctorate in international studies.

In 1981, Rice started teaching political science at Stanford University and gradually became well known for her expertise in Soviet affairs. In 1984 she won a teaching award at Stanford. She was a fellow at the Hoover Institute, an internationally known think tank at Stanford, during the 1985-86 academic year. Her books The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army: 1948-1983 and The Gorbachev Era were published in 1985 and 1986, respectively. In 1987 she served as an advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on strategic nuclear policy and briefed air force generals on strategy and force posture in the Soviet military. The following year, at the invitation of the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, she traveled to Bulgaria to speak to Soviet officials and diplomats on arms control policy.

At a Glance…

Born November 14, 1954; raised in Birmingham, AL; daughter of John Wesley and Angelena Ray Rice. Education: University of Denver, B.A. (magna cum laude), 1974, Ph.D., 1981; University of Notre Dame, M.A., 1975. Politics: Republican.

U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC, intern, 1977; Rand Corporation, intern, 1980; Stanford University, Stanford, CA, assistant professor of political science, 1981-89, associate professor, 1991—; National Security Council, Washington, DC, director of Soviet and East European Affairs, 1989-91. Member of board of directors of Chevron and Transamerica Corporation.

Awards: Award for excellence in teaching, Stanford University, 1984; fellow of the Hoover Institute, 1985-86; Ford Foundation fellow; fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Addresses: Office —Political Science Department, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA 94305-2044.

Appointed to the National Security Council

At the personal request of Brent Scowcroft, assistant to the president for national security affairs, Rice was named director of Soviet and East European affairs on the National Security Council in 1989. In this capacity she analyzed and explained to President George Bush the events of international importance occurring in the region. She helped Bush prepare for and participate in his superpower summit meetings with then-Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and other top officials in Malta, Washington, D.C., Paris, and Helsinki, Finland. In Malta, she sat at the bargaining table with Bush and Secretary of State James Baker. At the 1990 summit in Washington, D.C., she provided background and analysis in daily meetings and was one of only a handful of senior aides who attended exclusive evening dinner meetings.

The purpose of the summit meetings was to achieve a solid global peace plan. Much of the discussions centered on arms control, expansion of trade, and problems relating to the gradual freedom movement affecting border countries in the Soviet Union. With her expertise in Soviet politics, armaments and military affairs, Rice was in an excellent position to prepare Bush for his meetings. The hardest part of her work, she said in an interview with San Francisco: The Magazine, was remaining objective and “keeping the analyst in me separate from my political views.”

As Rice told Ebony, she was in Washington at a “truly amazing time to be working in the White House,” because so much was changing in the Eastern-bloc countries. The Berlin Wall, which was erected between East and West Berlin by the Communist government of East Germany in 1961, had come down, allowing citizens of the East to move freely to the West. And shortly thereafter, the world witnessed the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Returned to Career in Academics

In 1991, Rice left Washington to return to the academic life at Stanford University in California, but since then her expertise has been sought and her presence felt by many. After Senator Pete Wilson was elected governor of California in 1990, her name was circulated as his possible replacement in Congress; she had been asked to run for Congress before but had been asked to run for Congress before but had declined. Rice continues to publish her scholarly work and also writes editorials for magazines such as Time, and newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times. And the New York Times frequently seeks her opinion and commentary on foreign affairs.

In 1991, the 37-year-old Rice was appointed by Governor Wilson to a bipartisan committee to draw new state legislative and congressional districts in California. She was the youngest member chosen, and among her colleagues on the committee were several retired state justices, including a 75-year-old former supreme court justice. Wilson told the Los Angeles Times, “All [members] have certain attributes in common. All are distinguished scholars. All are leaders in their fields, known for impartiality and devoted to the truth.” Others agree with Wilson’s assessment of Rice’s achievements. In May of 1991, Chevron elected her to their 12-member board of directors, and in October of 1991, Transamerica Corporation did the same.

Rice, Racism, and Sexism

Rice grew up in the segregated south and remembers the days when blacks were turned away from restaurants and hotels; she also vividly recalls the civil rights wars that changed some of the inequities. She survived those troubled times because of her family’s “strength of community and strength of spirit,” as she told Katherine Fong of San Francisco: The Magazine.

While she has been fortunate, she also has suffered her share of overt and covert racism. In high school, despite her academically oriented curriculum and high grades, her counselor told her she wasn’t college material. “I had not done very will on the preliminary SAT exam,” she said in an interview with Ebony. “I remember thinking that the odd thing about it was that [the counselor] had not bothered to check my record. I was a straight-A student in all advanced courses. I was excelling in Latin. I was a figure skater and a piano student. That none of that occurred to her I think was a subtle form of racism. It was the problem of low expectations [for blacks].”

An unfortunate public incident in 1990 brought Rice more public attention than her position as director on the National Security Council. At the San Francisco airport, where she was accompanying a party of Soviet officials—wearing the appropriate White House identification—a secret-service agent ordered her to stand behind the security lines. When she tried to explain that she was with the group, he shoved her.

While the press made much of the incident, speculating on possible racist origins, Rice downplayed the event. “I was really taken aback at the press it received,” she told Ebony. “To my mind, it was a relatively minor incident and I quickly reported it to the head of the Secret Service who was appalled and promised to look into it. I sort of chalked it up to a field agent who isn’t involved in the activities that often and was overly zealous. What I didn’t feel from him was any racial hostility…. I didn’t write it off to race or gender… but just that he was rude.”

As the first black woman to hold her post in an area still very much dominated by white males, Rice has also endured her share of sexism. She sometimes counters sexist remarks by referring to other powerful women. “Haven’t they heard of [former prime minister of England] Margaret Thatcher, [former prime minister of India] Indira Gandhi, or Cleopatra [the Queen of Egypt] for that matter?,” she mused in Jet. She told Ebony that sexism “usually comes in the line of ‘How’d you end up doing this?’” Like everything else, she handles these moments with grace, but admits that she secretly enjoys the shock value when she walks into an arms negotiation meeting in Washington or Moscow and it turns out she is the Soviet expert, not the secretary. Her most successful weapon against the racism and sexism she has encountered is her own intelligence and ability.

Selected writings

The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army: 1948-1983, Princeton University Press, 1985.

(Editor with Alexander Dallin) The Gorbachev Era, Stanford Alumni Association, 1986.

Contributor to periodicals, including Journal of International Affairs, Studies in Comparative Communism, Time, World Politics, and Current History.

Sources

Ebony, October 1990.

Jet, April 17, 1989; June 18, 1990; June 25, 1990; November 19, 1990; December 17, 1990.

Los Angeles Times, June 7, 1990; May 8, 1991; July 27, 1991; September 16, 1991.

New York Times, August 21, 1991; December 16, 1991.

San Francisco: The Magazine, June 1988.

Wall Street Journal, May 14, 1991; October 9, 1991.

Washington Post, November 30, 1990; March 25, 1991; August 18, 1991.

—Robin Armstrong

Condoleezza Rice

Born November 14, 1954

Birmingham, Alabama

U.S. national security advisor during the 2003 Iraq War

"We're going to find the truth about what Saddam Hussein did with weapons of mass destruction, how he built his programs, how he concealed them."

Condoleezza Rice in an interview for National Public Radio.

Doctor Condoleezza Rice is the first woman to hold the office of U.S. national security advisor. She was appointed by President George W. Bush (see entry) and took office in January 2001. Rice played a key role in helping Bush draft a new American foreign policy following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. She also became one of the Bush administration's leading advocates for using military force to remove Saddam Hussein (see entry) from power in Iraq.

Grows up in the racially charged South

Condoleezza (pronounced kahn-dah-LEE-za) Rice was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on November 14, 1954. Her father, the Reverend John W. Rice Jr., ran the Westminster Presbyterian Church, which had been founded by her grandfather. He also worked as a guidance counselor and football coach at the black high school in Birmingham where her mother, Angelena (Ray) Rice, was a teacher.

Rice's parents named her after an Italian musical term, con dolcezza, which means to perform "with sweetness." Known as Condi for short, Rice began taking piano lessons at age three. Although she once entertained hopes of becoming a concert pianist, she eventually decided that she was not good enough. "Mozart didn't have to practice," she told the New York Times. "I was going to have to practice and practice and practice and was never going to be extraordinary."

As her parents' only child, Rice was constantly pushed to achieve. "I grew up in a family in which my parents put me into every book club," she told the New York Times. "So I never developed the fine art of recreational reading." To this day, she never reads simply for pleasure, but only to learn. As a young girl, Rice was tutored in Spanish and French. She excelled in her studies and entered the eighth grade at the age of eleven. As a high-school student, she became a competitive ice skater, getting up at 4:30 am for lessons.

Although she grew up in a middle-class black neighborhood, Rice saw her share of racial prejudice and oppression. During her childhood, Birmingham was segregated, meaning that people were divided according to their race. White people and black people had to use separate public facilities, including schools, swimming pools, and drinking fountains. This system, which was widely practiced in the South, was unfair to blacks and kept them in an inferior place in society. It also created a great deal of racial tension, which sometimes erupted into violence.

When Rice was nine years old, for example, a bomb exploded at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, only four blocks from where she was attending Sunday school. The blast killed four black girls, including one of her friends from kindergarten. Rice recalled in an essay for Time magazine that the "men in the community, my father among them, would go to the head of [our street] at night and sit there armed" to defend against racially motivated attacks. John Rice once organized a group of neighbors armed with shotguns to find the person who had thrown a gas bomb through another neighbor's window.

As she grew older, Rice combined the education and culture emphasized by her parents with a toughness that came from growing up in the racially charged South. "Condi was raised first and foremost to be a lady," Secretary of StateColin Powell once told a reporter for the New York Times. "She was raised in a protected environment to be a person of great self-confidence in Birmingham, where there was no reason to have self-confidence because you were a tenth-class citizen and you were black."

Professor of political science and expert on the Soviet Union

At age fifteen, Rice simultaneously completed her senior year of high school and her freshman year at the University of Denver. She graduated from college in 1974, at age nineteen, with a bachelor's degree in political science. She went on to earn a master's degree in political science at the University of Notre Dame. Rice returned to the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver to receive a doctorate in political science in 1981. A short time later she joined the faculty in political science at Stanford University in California.

While studying for her bachelor's degree, Rice met Doctor Joseph Korbel. Korbel, a professor and the father of future United Nations ambassador and U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (see box) became Rice's mentor and introduced her to Russian history. Rice learned to speak Russian fluently, and by 1986 she was considered an expert on Soviet arms control.

In 1995 Rice attended a lecture given by retired U.S. Army General Brent Scowcroft. During the lecture she asked Scowcroft a tough question about a government commission that he was leading. Scowcroft was impressed by her boldness as well as her thoughtful analysis. He approached her afterward and said, "I don't think anybody's ever asked me that."

Becomes the first female national security advisor

In 1988 George H. W. Bush (see entry) was elected president of the United States, and Scowcroft became his national security advisor. A year later Scowcroft recruited Rice to serve on the National Security Council during one of the

Madeleine Albright, First Woman to Serve as U.S. Secretary of State

Madeleine Korbel Albright served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (1993–97) and U.S. secretary of state (1997–2000) under President Bill Clinton. In these positions, she helped shape U.S. policy toward Iraq during the decade between the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the 2003 Iraq War.

Albright was born as Maria Jana Korbel on May 15, 1937, in Prague, Czechoslovakia. She was the daughter of Czech diplomat Josef Korbel and his wife, Anna. Her family was forced to flee Czechoslovakia when Germany invaded the country in 1938. They lived in England during World War II and later moved to the United States. They settled in Colorado, where her father became an influential professor at the University of Denver. Albright became a naturalized U.S. citizen and changed her first name to Madeleine.

Albright majored in political science at Wellesley College, graduating with honors in 1959. She then married Joseph Medill Patterson Albright. Albright initially tried to build a career as a journalist, but she quit after being the victim of sexual discrimination. During the 1960s she raised three daughters while also continuing her education. She spent more than ten years working on her doctorate in international relations at Columbia University.

After moving to Washington, D.C., in 1968, Albright became involved in Democratic politics and worked on several election campaigns. In 1977 one of her former professors, Zbigniew Brzezinski, became national security advisor to President Jimmy Carter. Brzezinski recruited Albright to serve as a liaison between his staff and Congress.

In 1982, after separating from her husband, Albright joined the faculty of Georgetown University as a professor of international affairs. In 1992 she served as the senior foreign policy advisor for Bill Clinton's presidential campaign. Once Clinton was elected, he named Albright as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (UN). She became only the second woman ever to fill that role and the only woman on Clinton's fifteen-member National Security Council. During her term in the United Nations, Albright earned a reputation as an effective communicator and tough negotiator.

After Clinton was reelected in 1996, he selected Albright as U.S. secretary of state. She became the first woman ever to hold that position and the highest-ranking female in U.S. government history. During her term in office, Albright became one of the key figures in an ongoing dispute between the United States and Iraq. In 1990 Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had invaded the neighboring country of Kuwait. His actions led to the 1991 Persian Gulf War, in which a U.S.-led coalition forced the Iraqi army to withdraw from Kuwait. The UN agreement that ended the war required Iraq to destroy all of its biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. But Hussein consistently failed to cooperate with the UN weapons inspectors sent to monitor Iraq's progress.

The United Nations used several different strategies to force Iraq to comply with the 1991 agreement, including economic sanctions. These trade restrictions prevented Iraq from selling oil in world markets or buying many types of goods from other countries. The sanctions were originally intended to prevent Hussein from rebuilding his army after the war. Over time, however, the sanctions created severe hardships among the Iraqi people.

In 1998 the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported that the sanctions had contributed to the deaths of five hundred thousand Iraqi children since the end of the war. Many members of the international community were appalled by such statistics and demanded that the United States lift the sanctions. But Albright and other officials in the Clinton administration insisted that the sanctions were a vital part of the United Nations' efforts to limit Hussein's power and prevent Iraq from posing a threat to world peace.

Albright became a staunch defender of the Clinton administration's policies toward Iraq. Her position created controversy following an appearance on the television news program "60 Minutes." Interviewer Lesley Stahl asked, "More than 500,000 Iraqi children are already dead as a direct result of the UN sanctions. Do you think the price is worth paying?" Albright replied, "It is a difficult question. But, yes, we think the price is worth it." Critics claimed that Albright was indifferent to the suffering of the Iraqi people. Her words provoked anger throughout the Middle East and increased feelings of sympathy for Iraq.

In late 1998 Iraq ended all cooperation with the UN weapons inspections. American and British military forces responded by launching a massive bombing campaign aimed at destroying sites that were suspected to hold Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The bombing did not convince Hussein to cooperate. Nevertheless, the international community made little further effort to enforce the UN agreement that had ended the 1991 war. When Clinton left office in 2001, Albright returned to her teaching position at Georgetown.

Sources: Dobbs, Michael. Madeleine Albright: A Twentieth-Century Odyssey. New York: Holt, 1999; Lippman, Thomas W. Madeleine Albright and the New American Diplomacy. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000; "Madeleine Albright." Contemporary Heroes and Heroines, 1998. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, 2004; "Madeleine Korbel Albright." Encyclopedia of World Biography, 1998. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, 2004.

most tumultuous times in world history. As director of Soviet and Eastern European Affairs and Special Assistant to the President on National Security Affairs, Rice helped forge U.S. foreign policy during the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. (Communism a system of government where the nation's leaders are selected by a single political party that controls all aspects of society. Private ownership of property is eliminated and government directs all economic production. The goods produced and accumulated wealth are, in theory, shared relatively equally by all. All religious practices are banned). During this period, the Soviet Union dissolved into a number of smaller republics and East and West Germany were reunified under a single government.

After two exhausting years in Washington, Rice left politics and returned to Stanford. In 1993 she was appointed the university's first black provost, or chief academic and budget officer. Two years later Rice went to Texas to visit former President Bush. She met his son George W. Bush, who was then in his first year as governor of Texas. The two discovered that they shared an avid enthusiasm for sports and physical fitness.

In 1998 Rice visited the Bush family home in Kennebunkport, Maine. She renewed her friendship with George W. Bush, who was then considering running for president. "Between tennis games and going out on the boat and sitting out on the back porch we would have conversations about what foreign policy challenges would face the next president," Rice recalled in the New York Times. Over the next two years, Rice acted as the Texas governor's foreign policy tutor.

During Bush's presidential campaign for the 2000 elections, Rice served as the candidate's foreign policy advisor. Bush won the presidency and took office in January 2001. One of his first acts was to appoint Rice as his national security advisor. This appointment made Rice the first woman in U.S. history to hold the office of national security advisor. The national security advisor is the leader of the National Security Council (NSC), which works to draft and articulate American foreign policy. Among the fifteen other members of the NSC were President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney (see entry), Secretary of State Colin Powell (see entry), and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (see entry).

American foreign policy changes after September 11

During his campaign, Bush said little about foreign policy. His few statements on the matter suggested that he wanted to avoid becoming entangled in the affairs of other countries. For example, he claimed that America was "over-committed around the world" and "throwing its weight around." He called for a new emphasis on domestic issues and less assistance for new, struggling governments.

But Bush's position changed dramatically following the terrorist attacks against the United States that took place on September 11, 2001. It was on this day that members of a radical Islamic terrorist group called Al Qaeda hijacked four commercial airplanes and crashed them into the World Trade Center towers in New York City, the Pentagon building near Washington, D.C., and a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly three thousand people. A short time later, Bush met with Rice and his other top advisors at Camp David, Maryland. They outlined a series of phases in a global war against terrorism. The first phase involved a military attack against the people directly responsible for the September 11 attacks, Muslim cleric (religious leader) Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorist organization, and their protectors in Afghanistan. In the second phase, Bush planned to extend the war on terrorism to include any group or nation that possessed the ability and desire to harm the United States. Rice was one of the administration's strongest voices in favor expanding the war on terrorism to include "rogue nations."

Bush first described the new foreign policy in his State of the Union address in January 2002. In this speech, he suggested that the Cold War strategy of deterrence, maintaining a strong military in order to discourage other countries from attacking, was not effective against terrorists. He argued that the only way to defeat these new enemies was to strike first, or preemptively, to eliminate their capacity to attack American interests before they had a chance to use it. He specifically mentioned several nations that he viewed as threats to the United States, including Iraq.

Over the next several months, Rice emerged as one of the leading supporters of Bush's new foreign policy. She made a series of public statements in favor of expanding the war on terrorism to include countries that supported terrorists or could provide them with weapons of mass destruction. In one such speech, Rice claimed that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had ties to the Al Qaeda terrorist organization. "Saddam's regime and Al Qaeda have been orbiting each other quite a lot," she stated. "There have been contacts for quite a while. There are a number of serious Al Qaeda people who have found refuge in Iraq.... We have picked up evidence of [the Iraqis] training Al Qaeda operatives in chemical-weapons activities."

Throughout the fall of 2002, Bush pressured the United Nations (UN) to authorize the use of military force to remove Hussein from power in Iraq. Rice continued to speak out in defense of this strategy. "Saddam has used weapons of mass destruction," she told the New Yorker, referring to the Iraqi leader's use of poison gas against the Kurds of northern Iraq in 1988, "and continues to acquire them at an incredibly rapid pace." She also expressed concern that Hussein might be close to acquiring nuclear weapons.

Releases National Security Strategy

In September 2002 Rice's office released a document called the National Security Strategy, which articulated America's new foreign policy. It explained in greater depth the nation's reasons for wanting to invade Iraq and overthrow Hussein. The National Security Strategy asserted America's right to "dissuade [discourage] potential adversaries from pursuing a military buildup in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States." It also proclaimed that the United States "will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting preemptively" with military force.

The right to "act preemptively" meant that the United States could attack another country without having been attacked first, as long as it perceived that nation as a threat. "It is simply not possible to ignore and isolate other powerful states that do not share [American] values," Rice explained. The National Security Strategy specifically addressed the issue of "rogue nations" like Iraq. They "reject basic human values and hate the United States and everything for which it stands," Rice told the New Yorker.

In the months leading up to the 2003 Iraq War, the Bush administration's new foreign policy came under criticism both within the United States and internationally. Opponents questioned the wisdom of the policy as well as its legality under international law. But Rice and other administration officials continued to defend their views and prepare for a military invasion of Iraq.

Despite a lack of UN support, the United States attacked Iraq on March 19, 2003 (March 20 in Iraq). The offensive, called Operation Iraqi Freedom, succeeded in removing Hussein from power after only a few weeks of fighting. On May 1 Bush announced the end of major combat operations in Iraq. U.S. troops remained in the country to provide security, aid in reconstruction efforts, and help the Iraqi people form a new democratic government.

Postwar problems raise doubts about policies

Over the next several months, however, the situation in Iraq raised some doubts about the Bush administration's strategy. Coalition troops struggled to maintain security in the face of Iraqi resistance and a series of terrorist attacks. A massive search failed to uncover any weapons of mass destruction or evidence linking Hussein to Al Qaeda. Critics suggested that the Bush administration should have waited to gather more reliable intelligence (information collected through spying activities) before starting a war.

Rice and other members of the Bush administration continued to claim that weapons of mass destruction would eventually be found in Iraq. But in their public statements, they also began backing away from weapons and terrorism as the main reasons for going to war. Instead, Rice and other administration officials emphasized that the war had freed the Iraqi people from a brutal dictator. "We're going to find the truth about what Saddam Hussein did with weapons of mass destruction, how he built his programs, how he concealed them," she told Tavis Smiley in an interview for National Public Radio. Rice continued:

We didn't make this stuff up. There was intelligence. There were [foreign] intelligence services. There were UN inspectors.... But we can also say that, in addition to the threat from weapons of mass destruction, this was one of the most brutal dictators of modern times, somebody who had attacked his neighbors in the past. And the Middle East, as a region, is far better off for his removal. That, in itself, is a very important contribution.

Despite the postwar problems in Iraq, Rice continued to defend Bush's foreign policy decisions. "The people of the Middle East share the desire for freedom," she said in an October 2003 speech. "We have an opportunity—and an obligation—to help them turn this desire into reality. And we must work with others to create a world where terror is shunned and hope is the provenance of every living human. That is the strategic challenge—and moral mission—of our time."

Where to Learn More

"Condoleezza Rice." Biography Resource Center Online. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, 2001.

"Exceeding Expectations, Rice Returns to White House in Top Job." CNN.com, December 17, 2000.

LeMann, Nicholas. "Without a Doubt." New Yorker, October 14, 2002.

Sciolino, Elaine. "Woman in the News; Compulsion to Achieve." New York Times, December 18, 2000.

Smiley, Tavis. "Interview: Condoleezza Rice." NPR, June 13, 2003. Available online at http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1297605 (accessed on April 1, 2004).

Zakaris, Fareed. "Bush, Rice, and the 9-11 Shift." Newsweek, December 16, 2002.

Rice, Condoleezza

November 14, 1954 • Birmingham, Alabama

National security adviser

Condoleezza Rice became one of the most influential women in the world of global politics when President George W. Bush (1946–) named her as his national security adviser in December of 2000. Her role became extremely important after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and the Pentagon in Washington. Rice has played a crucial part in shaping the most aggressive U.S. foreign policy in modern history, with wars launched against Afghanistan and Iraq during her time in office.

Became kindergarten piano prodigy

Rice grew up during a deeply segregated era of American history. She was born in 1954 in Birmingham, Alabama, to parents who were both educators. Her father, John Wesley Rice Jr., was a football coach and high school guidance counselor at one of Birmingham's black public schools. He was also an ordained Presbyterian minister in Birmingham's Westminster Presbyterian Church, which had been founded by his own father, also a minister. Rice's mother, Angelena, was a teacher and church organist. Angelena loved opera, and so named her only child after an Italian-language term, con dolcezza. It is used in musical notation and means "to play with sweetness."

Birmingham was clearly divided into black and white spheres during Rice's childhood, and the two worlds rarely met. But her parents were determined that their only child would grow up to be an accomplished and well-rounded young woman. Rice began piano lessons at the age of three, and gave her first recital a year later. She became somewhat of a musical prodigy in the Birmingham area, performing often at school and community events. In addition to long hours spent practicing the piano, she also took French and Spanish lessons after school, and later became a competitive figure skater. "My whole community was determined not to let their children's horizons be limited by growing up in segregated Birmingham," Rice recalled in an interview with television personality Oprah Winfrey (1954–) for O, The Oprah Magazine. "Sometimes I think they overcompensated because they wanted their kids to be so much better."

"I find football so interesting strategically. It's the closest thing to war. What you're really doing is taking and yielding territory, and you have certain strategies and tactics."

Not surprisingly, Rice earned good grades in school, even at an early age. Attending segregated schools in Birmingham, she skipped the first grade entirely and was later promoted from the sixth directly into the eighth grade. Her city became a battleground during the emerging civil rights movement in the late 1950s, and the strife directly touched Rice's early life. In 1963 the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, situated in the middle of Birmingham's black community, was the site of a tragic firebombing that killed four little girls who were attending Sunday school. Rice knew two of them.

Finished high school at fifteen

Rice's family moved to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, around 1965, when she was eleven years old. Her father had taken a job there as a college administrator. They later settled in Denver, Colorado, where she attended an integrated public school for the first time in her life, beginning with the tenth grade. She finished her last year of high school and her first year at the University of Denver at the same time.

"The Most Powerful Woman in the World"

U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice has sometimes been described as the most influential woman in global politics. A university professor and expert on Russian history, Rice is known for her cool, calm manner. When Bush appointed her to the job in 2000, some wondered if she was qualified for it. But Janne Nolan, a friend of Rice's from her early days as a Stanford University professor, told New Yorker writer Nicholas Lemann that Rice had a solid track record for proving herself. "I've watched it over and over again—the sequential underestimation of Condi," Nolan told Lemann. "It just gets worse and worse. She's always thought of as underqualified and in over her head, and she always kicks everyone's butt."

A job such as Rice's requires nerves of steel, and the French- and Russian-fluent academic, whose friends and family call her "Condi," fits the bill. She explained in an interview with Essence writer Isabel Wilkerson, "My parents went to great lengths to make sure I was confident. My mother was also a great believer in being proper." As an African American and a professional, Rice has experienced the occasional racial snub. She recalled one occasion when she asked to see some of the nicer jewelry in a store, and the saleswoman mumbled a rude remark under her breath. As Rice recalled to Wilkerson, she told the woman, "'Let's get one thing clear. If you could afford anything in here, you wouldn't be behind this counter. So I strongly suggest you do your job.'"

The confidence that Rice's parents instilled in her comes out in other ways, too. She favors suits by Italian designer Giorgio Armani, but the trim, fit national security adviser prefers her skirts to hit just above the knee. Her favorite lipstick comes from the Yves Saint Laurent cosmetics counter. When asked about her off-duty hours, Rice told Wilkerson that she watches sports and goes shopping. Wilkerson wondered about the Secret Service security detail that accompanies Rice in public, but Rice responded with a humor rarely on display in public, "They can handle shopping."

For years Rice dreamed of becoming a concert pianist. At the University of Denver she was originally a music major, but eventually gave up on her dream after spending a summer at music camp. "Technically, I can play most anything," she explained to Winfrey about her decision to change majors. "But I'll never play it the way the truly great pianists do." She fell in love with political science and Russian history after she took a class taught by Josef Korbel (1909–1977), a refugee from Czechoslovakia. In the 1990s Korbel's daughter, Madeleine Albright (1937–), became the first female U.S. Secretary of State.

Rice began taking Russian-language and history courses, and became fascinated by Cold War politics. The term refers to the hostilities between the United States and the world's first Communist state, Soviet Russia, in the years following World War II (1939–45). Each "superpower" tried to win allies to its brand of politics, and in the process each side built up a large arsenal of nuclear weapons. After she graduated from the University of Denver in 1974, Rice enrolled at Notre Dame University in Indiana, where she earned a master's degree in government and international studies.

Drifted for a time

Years later Rice admitted, in the interview with Winfrey, "I am still someone with no long-term plan." To begin her post-college career, she lined up a job as an executive assistant—in other words, a secretary—to a vice president at Honeywell, a large electronics corporation. But a company reorganization ended that career possibility. For a time she gave piano lessons. Then her former professor, Josef Korbel, suggested that she return to school, and she began work on a Ph.D. degree at the University of Denver.

Rice was a promising new talent in her field even before she earned a doctorate in 1981. Her dissertation investigated the relationship between the Czechoslovak Communist Party and its army. Soon she was offered a fellowship at Stanford University. No other woman had ever been offered a fellowship to its Center for International Security and Arms Control. She eagerly accepted, and the following year she was hired by Stanford to teach political science.

Rice became a tenured professor at Stanford in 1987. She was also a rising star in U.S. foreign policy circles. She served as the informal campaign adviser to a Colorado Democrat, Gary Hart (1936–), during his 1984 bid for the White House. She came to know a foreign policy expert, Brent Scowcroft (1925–), and was offered her first official job in government. Scowcroft had been named national security adviser by George H. W. Bush (1924–), who was elected president in 1988. Scowcroft then hired Rice as a staff member on the National Security Council.

Served in first Bush White House

The National Security Council helps analyze data and plan American foreign policy. It looks at potential global threats from hostile nations, and works to make strategic alliances with friendly ones. Rice eventually became a special assistant to the first President Bush, serving as his expert on Soviet and East European affairs. It was an important time in American foreign policy. The political system of the Soviet Union was crumbling, and by 1991 the Communist governments allied with Soviet Russia had been peacefully ousted throughout the Eastern Bloc (as the communist nations in Eastern Europe were known).

But Rice tired of the toll the White House job took on her personal life, and she resigned in 1991. She went back to teaching at Stanford, and in 1993 became the university's first-ever female provost, which essentially made her second-in-command at the school. She was also the first African American to be selected for the position. "That was the toughest job I ever had," she told Nicholas Lemann in a New Yorker profile. She was charged with eliminating a large budget deficit, and the university had also been accused of misusing government grant money intended for military research. There was internal turmoil as well, and some faculty members complained about Rice's no-nonsense manner. "I told people, 'I don't do committees,'" she explained to Lemann.

Rice remained on friendly terms with the Bush family and came to know one of the sons, George W., during visits to the Bush summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine. In 1999 George W. Bush decided to try and win the Republican Party's nomination as its presidential candidate for 2000. He hired Rice to lead his team of foreign policy advisers, and she quit the Stanford job. She began working closely with Bush, who was governor of Texas at the time and had very little other political experience, especially in foreign relations.

Bush won his party's nomination and later was declared the winner of a hotly contested November election. The president-elect immediately named Rice as his national security adviser. Though she was not the first African American ever to hold the post—Bush's new Secretary of State, Colin L. Powell (1937–), had held the job for a year in the late 1980s—she was the first woman ever to serve in the position. The national security adviser helps shape American foreign policy, both on the public front and behind the scenes, in strategy sessions with the president and his team.

Plotted strategy from underground bunker

Rice's duties also included coming up with ideas to combat threats to American interests at home and overseas. This became an important part of her job on the morning of September 11, 2001. She was in a meeting at the White House when an aide notified her that a plane had struck the World Trade Center. She quickly ended the meeting and notified the President, who was in Florida. After a second plane crashed into the other tower of the New York landmark, she and other key personnel gathered in what is known as the White House "Situation Room." When a third plane crashed into the Pentagon Building, which is the command center for the U.S. Armed Forces, Rice and the others retreated to an underground bunker. The attack was the deadliest ever to occur on American soil.

Rice worked long days in the months afterward to shape U.S. foreign policy. The first order of business involved Afghanistan, which was suspected of harboring the shadowy Islamic fundamentalist group known as Al Qaeda. It was founded by a Saudi exile, Osama bin Laden (1957–), who quickly took responsibility for the 9/11 attacks. Less than a month later, U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan. Rice also worked to create a new policy for dealing with longtime Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein (1937–). The Bush White House believed that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that could be used against the United States. In March of 2003 the United States invaded Iraq.

The fourth year of the Bush Administration was a difficult one for Rice and other top White House and Pentagon personnel. Though Hussein had been captured and the war in Iraq was officially declared over, U.S. troops stationed in Iraq had become the target of repeated attacks by insurgents. And American military operatives had yet to capture bin Laden. In April of 2004 Rice was called to testify before a special panel that had been set up to investigate the 9/11 attacks, namely whether or not the attacks could have been prevented and how the emergency response to such an attack could be improved. There were charges that U.S. intelligence officials may have come across suspicious information but failed to put the pieces together. Rice sat before the official 9/11 Commission, in front of a barrage of television cameras, and held her ground. "There was nothing demonstrating or showing that something was coming in the United States," she asserted, according to the New York Times. "If there had been something, we would have acted on it."

Dreams of top NFL job

Rice lives in a luxury apartment complex in Washington known as Watergate. Her mother died in 1985, and her father died the same month that Bush named her to the national security adviser post. She attends church regularly, and is known to be close to the President and his wife, Laura (1946–). At the Maryland presidential retreat known as Camp David, she has been known to watch hours of televised sports with President Bush. Both are dedicated football fans, and Rice has also been known to spend an entire day on her own watching college and pro football games.

Rice's name has been mentioned as a possible future vice-presidential candidate. Although she has joked that she would love to serve as commissioner of the National Football League, she has also said that she looks forward to returning to teaching once her service to the Bush White House comes to an end. "I miss my kids," she said in the interview with Winfrey. "In a class of 20, there are always two or three for whom the lights go on. When that happens, I think I've done for them what Dr. Korbel did for me."

For More Information

Periodicals

Bumiller, Elisabeth. "A Partner in Shaping an Assertive Foreign Policy." New York Times (January 7, 2004): p. A1.

"Condi Rice Can't Lose: George W. Bush's Foreign-Policy Adviser Is a Future Superstar. But Can She Save Bush from Himself?" Time (September 27, 1999): p. 51.

Lemann, Nicholas. "Without a Doubt. (National-Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice)." New Yorker (October 14, 2002).

Lewis, Neil A. "Bush Adviser Backs Use of Race in College Admissions." New York Times (Jan 18, 2003): p. A14.

Oppel, Richard A. Jr. "Bush Adviser Gets National Security Post." New York Times (December 18, 2000): p. A1.

Sciolino, Elaine. "Compulsion To Achieve—Condoleezza Rice." New York Times (December 18, 2000): p. A1.

"Sticking to Their Scripts." New York Times (April 9, 2004): p. A1.

Wilkerson, Isabel. "The Most Powerful Woman in the World: As National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice Has the Ear of the President. So Who Exactly Is This Daughter of 1960's Birmingham, and What Does She Bring to the Table?" Essence (February 2002): p. 114.

Winfrey, Oprah. "Oprah Talks to Condoleezza Rice: Our Calm, Cool, Collected National Security Adviser on Downtime (Piano, Football, Shopping) and Uptime (Faith, Unity, Power)—And Why the Terrorists Have Already Lost. (The O Interview)." O, The Oprah Magazine (February 2002): p. 118.

Condoleezza Rice

Born November 14, 1954
Birmingham, Alabama

U.S. national security advisor

C ondoleezza Rice was America's top advisor on the Soviet Union during the administration of President George Bush (1924–; served 1989–93; see entry), helping to write U.S. policy regarding the unification of Germany at the end of the Cold War in November 1990. The Cold War was an intense political and economic rivalry from 1945 to 1991 between the United States and the Soviet Union, falling just short of military conflict. For her part, Rice said she felt fortunate to have been given the chance to help shape America's response to these extraordinary events.

Rice was front and center at one of the most historic scenes in modern political history—the end of the Cold War era: In 1991, the Soviet Union broke apart and relations between the United States and the Soviets normalized. Returning to Washington, D.C., in January 2000 as part of the administration of President George W. Bush (1946–; served 2001–), Rice took on the role of national security advisor, the chief foreign policy advisor to the president.

Early life

An only child born to John Wesley Rice and Angelena Ray Rice, Condoleezza Rice was surrounded by love from the very beginning. Her father called her his "little star" and worked very hard to give her every advantage. An ordained Presbyterian minister, he also worked as a teacher, coach, and guidance counselor. Her mother was a teacher and a pianist. She named her daughter after an Italian musical term, con dolcezza—"to play with sweetness." Condi, as she is called, was the delight of her parents and they were the driving force in her life.

Her education began in her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. It was evident early on that she was a high achiever, and she rose to any challenge. She excelled both in academics and in the arts. Under the guidance of her educator parents, she skipped first and seventh grades. After her father moved the family to Denver, Colorado, Rice decided to take college courses while still in high school. She enrolled at the University of Denver at the age of fifteen. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in political science cum laude (with honors) in 1974 when she was nineteen. Rice earned a master's degree at the University of Notre Dame in 1975 and a doctorate from the University of Denver's Graduate School of International Studies in 1981. Both of her advanced degrees were also in political science.

After graduation, Rice went to work at Stanford University as a Soviet expert on the political science faculty. She was twenty-six years old at the time.

Influences

Condoleezza Rice was born at a time when her country was dealing with civil rights on a national level and the Cold War on an international level. Civil rights are personal liberties that belong to an individual such as freedom of speech and freedom from discrimination. A descendent of black Americans from the South, Rice was raised in Titusville, a middle-class suburb of black professionals in Birmingham, Alabama. In the 1950s and 1960s, Birmingham was the most racially segregated city in the South and was a focal point of the civil rights movement. Efforts to achieve civil rights often resulted in violence.

On September 15, 1963, a bomb killed four young girls while they were attending church at the 16th Street Baptist Church. Eleven-year-old Denise McNair was the youngest who died. She had attended kindergarten with young Condoleezza. A group called "nightriders" came out at night to start fires or hide bombs in the segregated black neighborhoods. Rice's father was one of the men who took to the neighborhood streets with a shotgun to protect their families.

Even though her parents could not sit down to eat at the local Woolworth's counter, they wanted their daughter to believe she could one day be U.S. president. In 1965, when Rice was eleven, her father took her to Washington, D.C., where she stood in front of the White House. Even though at the time most blacks were not allowed to vote, according to Antonia Felix's Condi: The Condoleezza Rice Story, she told her father, "One day, I'll be in that house."

Rice's parents were devoted to education and achievement, which they felt would enable Rice to be a success in whatever profession she chose. She was also often reminded that she would have to be "twice as good," but never to think of herself as a victim. Her ancestors had taken every opportunity to learn and had passed that appreciation of learning to their children. In the end, it was Rice's own family legacy of dedication to the educational process and not the civil rights struggle that defined her story.

The Cold War

While a junior at the University of Denver, Rice attended a lecture given by Professor Josef Korbel (1909–1977) that would change her life. He was a former central European diplomat and a Soviet specialist. His daughter, Madeleine Albright (1937–), later became secretary of state for President Bill Clinton (1946–; served 1993–2001). Rice spent time in the Korbel home and decided she wanted to study the Soviet Union. She had recently given up on her dream of becoming a concert pianist, and Russia became her new passion. Her attraction for Soviet studies came into focus at Notre Dame. She also had an interest in military strategy. She wrote about the problems of arms control and U.S.-Soviet relations in a research paper, which, in turn, led to her doctoral dissertation. Rice visited Russia several times over a five-year period in the late 1970s and early 1980s while doing research for her dissertation. When she arrived at Stanford University, she was a member of the Center for International Security and Arms Control.

As noted in Antonia Felix's book Condi: The Condoleezza Rice Story, George magazine's Ann Reilly Dowd wrote a profile on Rice that summarized her position: "Condi came to see the Cold War not as a war of ideas between communism and democracy but as something more primordial [basic or elemental]—a raw contest between two great competing national interests." Communism is a system of government in which a single party controls all aspects of society. In economic theory, it bans private ownership of property and businesses so that all goods produced and wealth accumulated are supposedly shared equally by all. Democracy is a political system consisting of several political parties whose members are elected to various government offices by vote of the people. Its economic system is called capitalism, where property and business are privately owned and competition in the marketplace establishes financial success or failure.

A call to Washington, D.C.

In 1989, while Rice was teaching at Stanford, she received a call. It was from Brent Scowcroft (1925–), the national security advisor to President George Bush. He wanted Rice to come to Washington. They got along well; both spoke fluent Russian and were academically oriented. Both had taught Soviet history. Bush asked Rice to serve on the National Security Council (NSC), an advisory group in the executive branch of government consisting of the president; the secretaries of state, defense, army, navy, and air force; and the national security advisor and staff. She took a leave of absence from Stanford and put her Soviet expertise into practice.

Rice joined the forty-member team as director of Soviet and East European affairs. Four months later, she was senior director for Soviet affairs. She was also named special assistant to the president for national security affairs. She served as an aide to Scowcroft and helped coordinate the U.S. foreign policy-making process by gathering information and writing briefing papers.

Events climaxed in December 1989 at the Malta Summit. (Malta is an island nation in the Mediterranean Sea 60 miles [97 kilometers] south of Sicily, Italy.) Rice accompanied Scowcroft as part of the U.S. delegation when President Bush met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (1931–; see entry). They met on the Soviet cruiser Maxim Gorky to discuss the reunification of Germany. At Malta, the two leaders opened up a new age of cooperation between the superpowers—and Rice was there. With the collapse of the communist government in East Germany as well as other Eastern European countries in 1989, the Soviet Union soon broke apart in the next two years. Rice was at the center of American-Soviet policy during the breakup until she left her post in March 1991. The Soviet Union would cease to exist on December 31, 1991.

The professor

Returning to Stanford, Rice was again an educator. In 1993, she was appointed provost (a university's chief budget and academic officer). It was a bumpy ride, as the university was facing several financial problems. She was also criticized for not doing enough to promote diversity.

Rice's professional activities were not limited to the university. She volunteered her time as cofounder of the Center for a New Generation. The center was an after-school

academy in East Palo Alto, California, that helped children from underfunded public school districts. She also served as a corporate board member for several corporations, including Chevron, a giant in the U.S. oil industry. Chevron named a supertanker after her. She also resumed her writing career.

Back to Washington, D.C.

In 1999, Rice left Stanford to join the presidential campaign of then–Texas governor George W. Bush. Upon Bush's election in 2000, the president-elect named her as his national security advisor. She filled the crucial role of presidential sounding board. Her combination of charm, intelligence, and charisma served her well as the chief referee between the often powerfully divided opinions within a presidential administration. She was said to deliver her considered wisdom in whispers, not shouts. Her role as national security advisor within the Bush administration brought her into the forefront on the declared war on terrorism following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., and in the war against Iraq in 2003.

Rice claimed her dream job would be to one day become the National Football League commissioner. A huge sports fan, she also worked out regularly. It was reported that more business was conducted on the tennis court at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, than sitting on the porch. Despite giving up her early ambitions of becoming a concert pianist, she continued to play regularly on the Steinway her parents had given her when she was fifteen. She was accomplished enough to have performed with cellist Yo-Yo Ma (1955–) at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., in 2002.

Rice has described herself as a deeply religious person. Like her parents before her, she wanted to make a difference in the lives of young people. As noted in Antonia Felix's Condi: The Condoleezza Rice Story, while speaking to a group of graduates at Stanford University in 1985, she urged them to make a difference in their world. She talked to them about tackling the problems of the Cold War. "All you have to do with the large, huge, and very frightening problems that we face is to make a contribution," she said. "If you focus too much on solving that problem, rather than just making a contribution to its solution … you will become paralyzed at the enormity of the task and be unable to do anything at all."

For More Information

Books

Felix, Antonia. Condi: The Condoleezza Rice Story. New York: Newmarket Press, 2002.

The International Who's Who, 2003. London and New York: Europa Publications Ltd., 2002.

Thomas, Evan. "The Quiet Power of Condi Rice." Newsweek (December 16, 2002): pp. 24–35.

Web Site

Biography of Dr. Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor. The White House, http/www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/ricebio.html (accessed on February 7, 2003).

Firsts

Condoleezza Rice became the first female national security advisor in U.S. history in January 2001. As a faculty member at Stanford University, she was the youngest provost in the institution's 110-year history and the first African American to hold the position.

Publications and Awards

Condoleezza Rice's books include:

The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army, 1948–1983: Uncertain Allegiance. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.

The Gorbachev Era (edited with Alexander Dallin). Stanford, CA: Stanford Alumni Association, 1986.

Germany Unified and Europe Transformed (with Philip Zelikow). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.

She also wrote numerous articles on Soviet and Eastern European foreign and defense policy.

Rice was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was awarded honorary doctorates from More-house College in 1991, the University of Alabama in 1994, and the University of Notre Dame in 1995.