Secretaries of State: Madeline Albright
Madeleine Albright was the first woman to serve as States Secretary of State. She served from 1997 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. Like a number of those who have served in this post, she was foreign-born, and is the daughter of Czech diplomat Josef Korbel. Her family emigrated to the United States in 1948. In 1997 she succeeded Warren Christopher as Secretary of State and served in the post until Clinton left office in 2001.
Her name at birth was Marie Jana Korbelová and she was born in 1937 in the Smíchov district of Prague, Czechoslovakia. At the time of her birth, Czechoslovakia was an independent nation, having gained independence from Austria-Hungary after World War I. At the time of her birth, her father Josef was serving as press-attaché at the Czechoslovak Embassy in Belgrade. The German invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938 forced the family into exile. She spent the war years in Britain, while her father worked for the Czechoslovak government-in-exile. They lived on Kensington Park Road in Notting Hill, London, where they endured the worst of the Blitz, but later moved to the outskirts of London. While in England, she appeared as a refugee child in a film designed to promote sympathy for all war refugees in London.
After the defeat of the Nazis and the collapse of Nazi Germany, the Albright family returned to Prague. He father was named Czechoslovakian Ambassador to the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, and the family moved to Belgrade. The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia took over the government in 1948, with support from the Soviet Union, and her father was forced to resign from his position. He took a position on a United Nations delegation to Kashmir, and sent his family to the United States, by way of London. The family arrived at Ellis Island in New York Harbor on November 11, 1948 and settled in Great Neck on Long Island. Korbel applied for political asylum and obtained a position on the staff of the political science department at the University of Denver in Colorado. He became dean of the university's school of international relations and taught future U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Albright graduated from the Kent Denver School in Cherry Hills Village in 1955. She attended Wellesley College, in Wellesley, Massachusetts, on a full scholarship, majoring in political science, graduating in 1959. She became a U.S. citizen in 1957. She married Joseph Medill Patterson Albright in 1959, shortly after her graduation. In January 1960, the couple moved to his hometown of Chicago, Illinois, where he worked at the Chicago Sun-Times as a journalist, and her husband worked as a picture editor for Encyclopedia Britannica. The following year, Joseph Albright began work at Newsday in New York City, and the couple moved to Garden City on Long Island. That year, she gave birth to twin daughters, Alice Patterson Albright and Anne Korbel Albright.
In 1962, the Albright family moved to Georgetown. Madeline Albright began studying international relations and Russian at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, a division of Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. She gave birth to another daughter, Katherine Medill Albright, in 1967, and continued her studies at Columbia University's Department of Public Law and Government. She earned an M.A. and a Ph.D., writing her Master's thesis on the Soviet diplomatic corps and her doctoral dissertation on the role of journalists in the Prague Spring of 1968.
In 1972 Albright organized a fund-raising dinner for 1972 presidential candidate Senator Ed Muskie of Maine. She was hired as his chief legislative assistant in 1976. In 1978 she was hired by President Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor, Zbignew Brezinski, to work as the National Security Council's congressional liaison. When Carter lost his bid for re-election in 1980, Albright joined the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. When she returned to Washington, her husband filed for divorce.
Albright joined the academic staff at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in 1982, specializing in Eastern European studies. She also directed the university's program on women in global politics. She served as a foreign policy advisor, briefing Vice-Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis in 1988.
In 1992, President Bill Clinton hired Albright was to handle the transition to a new administration at the National Security Council. In January 1993, Clinton nominated her to be U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, her first diplomatic posting. She was appointed Ambassador to the United Nations shortly after Clinton was inaugurated, presenting her credentials on February 9, 1993. During her tenure at the U.N., she was critical of U.N. Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, whom she criticized for his ineffective response to the genocide in Rwanda. At the time Albright herself was criticized by Canadian General Roméo Dallaire for her own failure to acknowledge that the killings in Rwanda as "genocide". Albright later said, in the PBS documentary "Ghosts of Rwanda": "it was a very, very difficult time, and the situation was unclear. You know, in retrospect, it all looks very clear. But at the time, it was unclear about what was happening in Rwanda."
In 1996, Albright helped to organize opposition to the re-election of U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who was running unopposed for a second term.
On January 23, 1997, Clinton appointed Albright as the 64th U.S. Secretary of State. She became the first female U.S. Secretary of State and the highest-ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government at the time of her appointment. During her tenure, Albright influenced American policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Middle East. As Secretary of State she represented the U.S. at the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong on July 1, 1997.
According to some accounts, Prudence Bushnell, U.S. Ambassador to Kenya, repeatedly asked Washington for additional security at the embassy in Nairobi, including in an April 1998 letter directly to Albright. Bushnell's requests were ignored. In 1998 the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed.
In February of 1998, Albright and President Bill Clinton both stated that an attack on Saddam Hussein could be stopped only if Hussein reversed his decision to halt arms inspections. "Iraq has a simple choice. Reverse course or face the consequences," Albright said. In one of her last acts as Secretary of State, Albright on January 8, 2001, paid a farewell call on Kofi Annan and said that the U.S. would continue to press Iraq to destroy all its weapons of mass destruction as a condition of lifting economic sanctions.
Following Albright's term as Secretary of State, Václav Havel, President of Czechoslovakia, talked openly about the possibility of Albright succeeding him, something Albright did not pursue. In 2001, Albright founded the Albright Group, an international strategy consulting firm based in Washington, D.C., which is now Albright Stonebridge Group. She serves on the Council on Foreign Relations Board of directors and on the International Advisory Committee of the Brookings Doha Center. She is also currently the Mortara Distinguished Professor of Diplomacy at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Washington, D.C. In 2003, she accepted a position on the Board of Directors of the New York Stock Exchange.
On October 25, 2005, Albright guest starred on the television drama Gilmore Girls as herself. She also made a guest appearance on the NBC comedy show Parks and Recreation, in the eighth episode of the seventh season. In an interview given to Newsweek, published July 24, 2006, Albright was asked about US involvement in Iraq and said: "I hope I'm wrong, but I'm afraid that Iraq is going to turn out to be the greatest disaster in American foreign policy – worse than Vietnam."
Albright endorsed and supported Hillary Clinton in her 2008 presidential campaign. Eight years later, she supported Clinton once again. While introducing Clinton at a 2016 campaign event in New Hampshire, Albright said, "There's a special place in hell for women who don't help each other".
Her name at birth was Marie Jana Korbelová and she was born in 1937 in the Smíchov district of Prague, Czechoslovakia. At the time of her birth, Czechoslovakia was an independent nation, having gained independence from Austria-Hungary after World War I. At the time of her birth, her father Josef was serving as press-attaché at the Czechoslovak Embassy in Belgrade. The German invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938 forced the family into exile. She spent the war years in Britain, while her father worked for the Czechoslovak government-in-exile. They lived on Kensington Park Road in Notting Hill, London, where they endured the worst of the Blitz, but later moved to the outskirts of London. While in England, she appeared as a refugee child in a film designed to promote sympathy for all war refugees in London.
After the defeat of the Nazis and the collapse of Nazi Germany, the Albright family returned to Prague. He father was named Czechoslovakian Ambassador to the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, and the family moved to Belgrade. The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia took over the government in 1948, with support from the Soviet Union, and her father was forced to resign from his position. He took a position on a United Nations delegation to Kashmir, and sent his family to the United States, by way of London. The family arrived at Ellis Island in New York Harbor on November 11, 1948 and settled in Great Neck on Long Island. Korbel applied for political asylum and obtained a position on the staff of the political science department at the University of Denver in Colorado. He became dean of the university's school of international relations and taught future U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Albright graduated from the Kent Denver School in Cherry Hills Village in 1955. She attended Wellesley College, in Wellesley, Massachusetts, on a full scholarship, majoring in political science, graduating in 1959. She became a U.S. citizen in 1957. She married Joseph Medill Patterson Albright in 1959, shortly after her graduation. In January 1960, the couple moved to his hometown of Chicago, Illinois, where he worked at the Chicago Sun-Times as a journalist, and her husband worked as a picture editor for Encyclopedia Britannica. The following year, Joseph Albright began work at Newsday in New York City, and the couple moved to Garden City on Long Island. That year, she gave birth to twin daughters, Alice Patterson Albright and Anne Korbel Albright.
In 1962, the Albright family moved to Georgetown. Madeline Albright began studying international relations and Russian at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, a division of Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. She gave birth to another daughter, Katherine Medill Albright, in 1967, and continued her studies at Columbia University's Department of Public Law and Government. She earned an M.A. and a Ph.D., writing her Master's thesis on the Soviet diplomatic corps and her doctoral dissertation on the role of journalists in the Prague Spring of 1968.
In 1972 Albright organized a fund-raising dinner for 1972 presidential candidate Senator Ed Muskie of Maine. She was hired as his chief legislative assistant in 1976. In 1978 she was hired by President Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor, Zbignew Brezinski, to work as the National Security Council's congressional liaison. When Carter lost his bid for re-election in 1980, Albright joined the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. When she returned to Washington, her husband filed for divorce.
Albright joined the academic staff at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in 1982, specializing in Eastern European studies. She also directed the university's program on women in global politics. She served as a foreign policy advisor, briefing Vice-Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis in 1988.
In 1992, President Bill Clinton hired Albright was to handle the transition to a new administration at the National Security Council. In January 1993, Clinton nominated her to be U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, her first diplomatic posting. She was appointed Ambassador to the United Nations shortly after Clinton was inaugurated, presenting her credentials on February 9, 1993. During her tenure at the U.N., she was critical of U.N. Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, whom she criticized for his ineffective response to the genocide in Rwanda. At the time Albright herself was criticized by Canadian General Roméo Dallaire for her own failure to acknowledge that the killings in Rwanda as "genocide". Albright later said, in the PBS documentary "Ghosts of Rwanda": "it was a very, very difficult time, and the situation was unclear. You know, in retrospect, it all looks very clear. But at the time, it was unclear about what was happening in Rwanda."
In 1996, Albright helped to organize opposition to the re-election of U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who was running unopposed for a second term.
On January 23, 1997, Clinton appointed Albright as the 64th U.S. Secretary of State. She became the first female U.S. Secretary of State and the highest-ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government at the time of her appointment. During her tenure, Albright influenced American policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Middle East. As Secretary of State she represented the U.S. at the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong on July 1, 1997.
According to some accounts, Prudence Bushnell, U.S. Ambassador to Kenya, repeatedly asked Washington for additional security at the embassy in Nairobi, including in an April 1998 letter directly to Albright. Bushnell's requests were ignored. In 1998 the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed.
In February of 1998, Albright and President Bill Clinton both stated that an attack on Saddam Hussein could be stopped only if Hussein reversed his decision to halt arms inspections. "Iraq has a simple choice. Reverse course or face the consequences," Albright said. In one of her last acts as Secretary of State, Albright on January 8, 2001, paid a farewell call on Kofi Annan and said that the U.S. would continue to press Iraq to destroy all its weapons of mass destruction as a condition of lifting economic sanctions.
Following Albright's term as Secretary of State, Václav Havel, President of Czechoslovakia, talked openly about the possibility of Albright succeeding him, something Albright did not pursue. In 2001, Albright founded the Albright Group, an international strategy consulting firm based in Washington, D.C., which is now Albright Stonebridge Group. She serves on the Council on Foreign Relations Board of directors and on the International Advisory Committee of the Brookings Doha Center. She is also currently the Mortara Distinguished Professor of Diplomacy at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Washington, D.C. In 2003, she accepted a position on the Board of Directors of the New York Stock Exchange.
On October 25, 2005, Albright guest starred on the television drama Gilmore Girls as herself. She also made a guest appearance on the NBC comedy show Parks and Recreation, in the eighth episode of the seventh season. In an interview given to Newsweek, published July 24, 2006, Albright was asked about US involvement in Iraq and said: "I hope I'm wrong, but I'm afraid that Iraq is going to turn out to be the greatest disaster in American foreign policy – worse than Vietnam."
Albright endorsed and supported Hillary Clinton in her 2008 presidential campaign. Eight years later, she supported Clinton once again. While introducing Clinton at a 2016 campaign event in New Hampshire, Albright said, "There's a special place in hell for women who don't help each other".