Black History Month: Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza Rice broke barriers when she became the first female African-American to hold the most senior position in cabinet, that of Secretary of state. A former Political Science professor, she served as the 66th United States Secretary of State. She was also the second African-American Secretary of State (the first being Colin Powell), and the second female Secretary of State (the first being Madeleine Albright). Before being appointed to this position, she was President George W. Bush's National Security Advisor, the first woman to serve in that position.
Rice was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and grew up while the South was racially segregated. Her parents were both teachers and her father was an ordained Presbyterian Minister. She obtained her bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Denver and her master's degree in political science from the University of Notre Dame. She worked at the State Department under the Carter administration and before holding an academic fellowship at Stanford University, where she later served as provost from 1993 to 1999. She was a Democrat until 1982, when she changed her political affiliation to Republican, in part because she disagreed with the foreign policy of Democratic President Jimmy Carter. Speaking at the 2000 Republican National Convention, she told the audience, "My father joined our party because the Democrats in Jim Crow Alabama of 1952 would not register him to vote. The Republicans did."
Rice worked at Stanford University as an assistant professor of political science from 1981 to 1987. She was promoted to associate professor in 1987, a post she held until 1993. She was a specialist on the Soviet Union. At meeting of arms control experts at Stanford in 1985, Rice attracted the attention of Brent Scowcroft, who had served as National Security Advisor under Gerald Ford. President George H. W. Bush appointed Scowcroft as his National Security Adviser in 1989, and Scowcroft asked Rice to become his Soviet expert on the United States National Security Council. The first President Bush relied heavily on Rice's advice in his dealings with Soviet leaders Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin.
She returned to Stanford in 1991 and developed a working relationship with George P. Shultz, who had been Ronald Reagan's Secretary of State from 1982 to 1989. At this time Schultz was a fellow at the Hoover Institution. In 1992, Shultz, who was a board member of Chevron Corporation, recommended Rice for a spot on the Chevron board. Chevron was pursuing a $10 billion development project in Kazakhstan and Rice personally knew the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev. She traveled to Kazakhstan on Chevron's behalf. In 1993, Chevron named a 129,000-ton supertanker SS Condoleezza Rice. During this period, Rice was also appointed to the boards of Transamerica Corporation (1991) and Hewlett-Packard (1992).
In 1993 Rice was appointed as Stanford's Provost, the chief budget and academic officer of the university. She also was granted tenure and became full professor. Rice was the first female, first African-American, and youngest Provost in Stanford's history. She was also named a senior fellow of the Institute for International Studies, and a senior fellow (by courtesy) of the Hoover Institution.
During George W. Bush's 2000 presidential election campaign, Rice took a one-year leave of absence from Stanford University to serve as his foreign policy advisor. The group of advisors she led called itself The Vulcans in honor of the monumental Vulcan statue, which sits on a hill overlooking her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. On December 17, 2000, Rice was named as National Security Advisor and stepped down from her position at Stanford. She was the first woman to occupy the post.
During the summer of 2001, Rice met with CIA Director George Tenet to discuss the possibilities and prevention of terrorist attacks on American targets. On July 10, 2001, Rice met with Tenet at the White House at Tenet's request to brief Rice and the NSC staff about the potential threat of an impending al Qaeda attack. On September 11, 2001, Rice was scheduled to outline a new national security policy that included missile defense as a cornerstone and played down the threat of stateless terrorism.
On April 8 2004, Rice testified before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (the 9/11 Commission). She thus became the first sitting National Security Advisor to testify on matters of policy.
Rice supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq. After Iraq delivered its declaration of weapons of mass destruction to the United Nations on December 8, 2002, Rice wrote an editorial for The New York Times entitled "Why We Know Iraq Is Lying". In a January 10, 2003, interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Rice addressed the issue of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's nuclear capabilities and said: "The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." In October 2003, Rice was named to run the Iraq Stabilization Group. After the invasion, when it became clear that Iraq did not have nuclear WMD capability, Rice was criticized for this position.
On November 16, 2004, President Bush nominated Rice to be Secretary of State. On January 26, 2005, the Senate confirmed her nomination by a vote of 85–13. As Secretary of State, Rice championed the expansion of democratic governments and called for the advancement of democratic reform throughout the Middle East. She restructured the State Department, as well as US diplomacy as a whole. As Secretary of State, Rice traveled extensively. She holds the record for most miles logged in the position.
Previously, in 1986, Rice was appointed special assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to work on nuclear strategic planning as part of a Council on Foreign Relations fellowship. In 2005, when Rice became office as Secretary of State where a major responsibility of hers was trying to address the nuclear threat from North Korea and Iran. North Korea had signed a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1985, but in 2002 it was discovered that they were operating a secret nuclear weapons program that violated the 1994 agreement. In that agreement North Korea had agreed to freeze and eventually dismantle its graphite moderated nuclear reactors, in exchange for international aid which would help them to build two new light-water nuclear reactors. In 2003, North Korea officially withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Rice promoted the concept of “six-party talks” that brought China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea into discussion with North Korea and the United States. During these discussions, Rice urged North Korea to dismantle their nuclear power program. In 2005, North Korea agreed to give up its entire nuclear program in exchange for security guarantees and economic benefits. But despite this agreement, the following year in 2006, North Korea test fired long range missiles. The UN Security Council demanded North Korea suspend the program. In 2007, Rice was involved in another nuclear agreement with North Korea. She negotiated an agreement involving North Korea and four other nations in which North Korea agreed to close its main nuclear reactor in exchange for $400 million in fuel and other foreign aid.
In 2008, Indian prime minister announced the Agreement for Cooperation between the United States and India involving peaceful uses of nuclear energy. As Secretary of State, Rice was involved in the negation of this agreement.
Rice is a very talented and accomplished pianist. At the age of 15, she played Mozart with the Denver Symphony, and while Secretary of State she played regularly with a chamber music group in Washington. She performed at diplomatic events at embassies, including a performance for Queen Elizabeth II, and she has performed in public with cellist Yo-Yo Ma and singer Aretha Franklin. In 2005, Rice accompanied Charity Sunshine Tillemann-Dick, a 21-year-old soprano, for a benefit concert for the Pulmonary Hypertension Association at the Kennedy Center in Washington.
After the end of the Bush Administration, Rice returned to Stanford and joined the Council on Foreign Relations. She appeared as herself in 2011 on the NBC sitcom 30 Rock in the fifth-season episode "Everything Sunny All the Time Always". She is a strong football fan and in October 2013, Rice was selected to be one of the 13 inaugural members of the College Football Playoff, Playoff, Postseason, Selection Committee. In an interview in October 2014, she said that she watches "14 or 15 games every week live on TV on Saturdays and recorded games on Sundays." She has appeared four times on the Time 100, Time magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people. In 2004 and 2005, she was ranked as the most powerful woman in the world by Forbes magazine and number two in 2006 (following the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel).
In October 2016 Condoleezza Rice called on Donald Trump to withdraw from the presidential race a month before he was elected president. After Trump was elected, the two met in the Oval Office in March of this year. Rice had recommended that former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson be appointed to serve as Secretary of State.
Rice was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and grew up while the South was racially segregated. Her parents were both teachers and her father was an ordained Presbyterian Minister. She obtained her bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Denver and her master's degree in political science from the University of Notre Dame. She worked at the State Department under the Carter administration and before holding an academic fellowship at Stanford University, where she later served as provost from 1993 to 1999. She was a Democrat until 1982, when she changed her political affiliation to Republican, in part because she disagreed with the foreign policy of Democratic President Jimmy Carter. Speaking at the 2000 Republican National Convention, she told the audience, "My father joined our party because the Democrats in Jim Crow Alabama of 1952 would not register him to vote. The Republicans did."
Rice worked at Stanford University as an assistant professor of political science from 1981 to 1987. She was promoted to associate professor in 1987, a post she held until 1993. She was a specialist on the Soviet Union. At meeting of arms control experts at Stanford in 1985, Rice attracted the attention of Brent Scowcroft, who had served as National Security Advisor under Gerald Ford. President George H. W. Bush appointed Scowcroft as his National Security Adviser in 1989, and Scowcroft asked Rice to become his Soviet expert on the United States National Security Council. The first President Bush relied heavily on Rice's advice in his dealings with Soviet leaders Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin.
She returned to Stanford in 1991 and developed a working relationship with George P. Shultz, who had been Ronald Reagan's Secretary of State from 1982 to 1989. At this time Schultz was a fellow at the Hoover Institution. In 1992, Shultz, who was a board member of Chevron Corporation, recommended Rice for a spot on the Chevron board. Chevron was pursuing a $10 billion development project in Kazakhstan and Rice personally knew the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev. She traveled to Kazakhstan on Chevron's behalf. In 1993, Chevron named a 129,000-ton supertanker SS Condoleezza Rice. During this period, Rice was also appointed to the boards of Transamerica Corporation (1991) and Hewlett-Packard (1992).
In 1993 Rice was appointed as Stanford's Provost, the chief budget and academic officer of the university. She also was granted tenure and became full professor. Rice was the first female, first African-American, and youngest Provost in Stanford's history. She was also named a senior fellow of the Institute for International Studies, and a senior fellow (by courtesy) of the Hoover Institution.
During George W. Bush's 2000 presidential election campaign, Rice took a one-year leave of absence from Stanford University to serve as his foreign policy advisor. The group of advisors she led called itself The Vulcans in honor of the monumental Vulcan statue, which sits on a hill overlooking her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. On December 17, 2000, Rice was named as National Security Advisor and stepped down from her position at Stanford. She was the first woman to occupy the post.
During the summer of 2001, Rice met with CIA Director George Tenet to discuss the possibilities and prevention of terrorist attacks on American targets. On July 10, 2001, Rice met with Tenet at the White House at Tenet's request to brief Rice and the NSC staff about the potential threat of an impending al Qaeda attack. On September 11, 2001, Rice was scheduled to outline a new national security policy that included missile defense as a cornerstone and played down the threat of stateless terrorism.
On April 8 2004, Rice testified before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (the 9/11 Commission). She thus became the first sitting National Security Advisor to testify on matters of policy.
Rice supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq. After Iraq delivered its declaration of weapons of mass destruction to the United Nations on December 8, 2002, Rice wrote an editorial for The New York Times entitled "Why We Know Iraq Is Lying". In a January 10, 2003, interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Rice addressed the issue of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's nuclear capabilities and said: "The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." In October 2003, Rice was named to run the Iraq Stabilization Group. After the invasion, when it became clear that Iraq did not have nuclear WMD capability, Rice was criticized for this position.
On November 16, 2004, President Bush nominated Rice to be Secretary of State. On January 26, 2005, the Senate confirmed her nomination by a vote of 85–13. As Secretary of State, Rice championed the expansion of democratic governments and called for the advancement of democratic reform throughout the Middle East. She restructured the State Department, as well as US diplomacy as a whole. As Secretary of State, Rice traveled extensively. She holds the record for most miles logged in the position.
Previously, in 1986, Rice was appointed special assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to work on nuclear strategic planning as part of a Council on Foreign Relations fellowship. In 2005, when Rice became office as Secretary of State where a major responsibility of hers was trying to address the nuclear threat from North Korea and Iran. North Korea had signed a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1985, but in 2002 it was discovered that they were operating a secret nuclear weapons program that violated the 1994 agreement. In that agreement North Korea had agreed to freeze and eventually dismantle its graphite moderated nuclear reactors, in exchange for international aid which would help them to build two new light-water nuclear reactors. In 2003, North Korea officially withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Rice promoted the concept of “six-party talks” that brought China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea into discussion with North Korea and the United States. During these discussions, Rice urged North Korea to dismantle their nuclear power program. In 2005, North Korea agreed to give up its entire nuclear program in exchange for security guarantees and economic benefits. But despite this agreement, the following year in 2006, North Korea test fired long range missiles. The UN Security Council demanded North Korea suspend the program. In 2007, Rice was involved in another nuclear agreement with North Korea. She negotiated an agreement involving North Korea and four other nations in which North Korea agreed to close its main nuclear reactor in exchange for $400 million in fuel and other foreign aid.
In 2008, Indian prime minister announced the Agreement for Cooperation between the United States and India involving peaceful uses of nuclear energy. As Secretary of State, Rice was involved in the negation of this agreement.
Rice is a very talented and accomplished pianist. At the age of 15, she played Mozart with the Denver Symphony, and while Secretary of State she played regularly with a chamber music group in Washington. She performed at diplomatic events at embassies, including a performance for Queen Elizabeth II, and she has performed in public with cellist Yo-Yo Ma and singer Aretha Franklin. In 2005, Rice accompanied Charity Sunshine Tillemann-Dick, a 21-year-old soprano, for a benefit concert for the Pulmonary Hypertension Association at the Kennedy Center in Washington.
After the end of the Bush Administration, Rice returned to Stanford and joined the Council on Foreign Relations. She appeared as herself in 2011 on the NBC sitcom 30 Rock in the fifth-season episode "Everything Sunny All the Time Always". She is a strong football fan and in October 2013, Rice was selected to be one of the 13 inaugural members of the College Football Playoff, Playoff, Postseason, Selection Committee. In an interview in October 2014, she said that she watches "14 or 15 games every week live on TV on Saturdays and recorded games on Sundays." She has appeared four times on the Time 100, Time magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people. In 2004 and 2005, she was ranked as the most powerful woman in the world by Forbes magazine and number two in 2006 (following the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel).
In October 2016 Condoleezza Rice called on Donald Trump to withdraw from the presidential race a month before he was elected president. After Trump was elected, the two met in the Oval Office in March of this year. Rice had recommended that former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson be appointed to serve as Secretary of State.