Condoleezza Rice (born November 14 1954) is the 66th
United States Secretary of State, and the second in the administration
of President George W. Bush to
hold the office. Rice is the first African American woman, second African American
(after Colin Powell, who served before her from 2001–2005), and second woman (after
Madeleine Albright who served from 1997–2001) to serve as Secretary of State. Rice
was President Bush's National Security Advisor during his
first term, but before joining the Bush administration, she was a Professor of
political science at Stanford University
where she served as Provost from 1993 to 1999. During the administration of
George H.W. Bush, Rice also served as the Soviet
and East European Affairs Advisor during the dissolution of the Soviet Union and German reunification.
When beginning as Secretary of State, Rice pioneered a policy of Transformational
Diplomacy, with a focus on democracy in the greater Middle East. Her emphasis on supporting democratically elected
governments faced challenges as Hamas captured a popular majority in Palestine yet supported Islamist terror, and influential
countries including Saudi Arabia and Egypt maintained non-democratic systems with U.S. support. Her policies and strong
diplomatic style gained her recognition as a powerful leader by mainstream media. She chairs the Millennium Challenge Corporation's board of directors.[1]
Early life and education
Rice was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and grew
up in the neighborhood of Titusville. She is the only child of
Presbyterian minister Reverend John Wesley
Rice, Jr., and his wife, Angelena Ray. Reverend Rice was a guidance counselor at
Ullman High School and minister of Westminster Presbyterian Church, which had been founded by his father. Angelena was a science,
music, and oratory teacher at Ullman.[2]
Condoleezza (whose name is derived from the Italian musical expression, Con
dolcezza, which means "with sweetness"[3])
experienced firsthand the injustices of Birmingham's discriminatory laws and attitudes. She was instructed to walk proudly in
public and to use the facilities at home rather than subject herself to the indignity of "colored" facilities in town. As Rice
recalls of her parents and their peers, "they refused to allow the limits and injustices of their time to limit our
horizons."[4]
However, Rice recalls various times in which she suffered discrimination on account of her race, which included being
relegated to a storage room at a department store instead of a regular dressing room, being barred from going to the circus or
the local amusement park, being denied hotel rooms, and even being given bad food at restaurants.[3] Also, while Condoleezza was mostly kept by her parents from areas where she
might face discrimination, she was very aware of the civil rights struggle and the problems of Jim Crow Birmingham. A neighbor, Juliemma Smith, described how "[Condi] used to call me and say things
like, 'Did you see what Bull Connor did today?' She was just a little girl and she did that
all the time. I would have to read the newspaper thoroughly because I wouldn’t know what she was going to talk about."[3] Rice herself said of the segregation era: "Those terrible
events burned into my consciousness. I missed many days at my segregated school because of the frequent bomb threats."[3]
During the violent days of the Civil Rights
Movement, Reverend Rice armed himself and kept guard over the house while Condoleezza practiced the piano inside.
According to J.L. Chestnut, Reverend Rice called local civil rights leader Fred
Shuttlesworth and his followers "uneducated, misguided Negroes."[5][6] Also, Reverend Rice
instilled in his daughter and students that black people would have to prove themselves worthy of advancement, and would simply
have to be "twice as good" to overcome injustices built into the system.[7] Rice said “My parents were very strategic, I was going to be so well prepared, and I was going to do
all of these things that were revered in white society so well, that I would be armored somehow from racism. I would be able to
confront white society on its own terms.”[8] While the
Rices supported the goals of the civil rights movement, they did not agree with the idea of putting their child in harm's
way.[3]
Rice was eight when her schoolmate Denise McNair, aged 11, was killed in the bombing of the primarily African American
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church by white supremacists on September 15, 1963. Rice has commented upon that moment in her life:
I remember the bombing of that Sunday School at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963. I did not see it happen, but
I heard it happen, and I felt it happen, just a few blocks away at my father’s church. It is a sound that I will never forget,
that will forever reverberate in my ears. That bomb took the lives of four young girls, including my friend and playmate, Denise
McNair. The crime was calculated to suck the hope out of young lives, bury their aspirations. But those fears were not propelled
forward, those terrorists failed.[9]
– Condoleezza Rice, Commencement 2004, Vanderbilt University, May 13, 2004
Rice states that growing up during racial segregation taught her determination
against adversity, and the need to be "twice as good" as non-minorities.[10] Segregation also hardened her stance on the right to bear arms; Rice has said in interviews that if
gun registration had been mandatory, her father's weapons would have been confiscated,
leaving them defenseless against Ku Klux Klan nightriders.[3]
Condoleezza Rice as an undergraduate student at the University of Denver
Rice started learning French, music, figure skating and ballet at age three.[11] At age 15, she began classes with the goal of becoming a concert pianist. Her plans changed when she realized that she did not play well enough to support herself through music
alone.[12] While Rice is not a professional pianist, she
still practices often and plays with a chamber music group. Rice made use of her pianist training to accompany cellist Yo-Yo Ma for Brahms's Violin
Sonata in D Minor at Constitution Hall in April 2002 for the National Medal of Arts Awards.[13]
In 1967, the family moved to Denver, Colorado. She
attended St. Mary's Academy, a private all-girls Catholic high
school in Cherry Hills Village, Colorado. After studying piano at the
Aspen Music Festival and School, Rice enrolled at the University of Denver, where her father both served as an assistant dean and taught a class called
"The Black Experience in America." Dean John Rice opposed institutional racism, government oppression, and the Vietnam War.
Rice attended a course on international politics taught by Josef Korbel, the father of
future Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. This experience sparked her interest in
the Soviet Union and international
relations and made her call Korbel "one of the most central figures in my life."[14]
Rice graduated from St. Mary's Academy in 1970. In 1974, at age 19, Rice earned her B.A. in political science, Phi Beta Kappa, from the University
of Denver. In 1975, she obtained her Master's Degree in political science from the University of Notre Dame.
She first worked in the State Department in 1977, during the
Carter administration, as an intern in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. In
1981, at the age of 26, she received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the
Graduate School of International Studies at Denver. Her dissertation along with some of her earliest publications, centered on
military policy and politics in Czechoslovakia.[15]
Rice was a Democrat until 1982 when she changed her political
affiliation to Republican after growing averse to former
President Carter's foreign policy.[16] She also cited influence from her father, John Wesley, in this decision, who himself switched from
Democrat to Republican after being denied voting registration by the Democratic registrar. In her words to the 2000 Republican
National Convention, "My father joined our party because the Democrats in Jim Crow Alabama of 1952 would not register him to
vote. The Republicans did."[17] In addition to
English, she speaks, with varying degrees of fluency, Russian, German, French, and Spanish.[18]
Academic career
Condoleezza Rice during a 2005 interview on ITV in London
Rice was hired by Stanford University as an Assistant
Professor in Political Science (1981–1987). She was granted tenure and promoted, first to Associate Professor (1987–1993), and then to
Provost, the chief budget and academic officer of the university (1993–1999), and
full Professor (1993–present).[19] Rice was the first female, first minority, and youngest Provost at Stanford.[20] She was also named a Senior Fellow of the
Institute for International Studies, and a Senior
Fellow (by courtesy) of the Hoover Institution. She was a specialist on the former
Soviet Union and gave lectures on the subject for the Berkeley-Stanford joint program led
by UC Berkeley Professor George
Breslauer in the mid-1980s.
Provost promotion
Former Stanford President Gerhard Casper said the university was "most fortunate in
persuading someone of Professor Rice's exceptional talents and proven ability in critical situations to take on this task.
Everything she has done, she has done well; I have every confidence that she will continue that record as provost."[21] Rice’s Stanford appointment was considered, by Casper, an
effort to address concerns about alleged bias at Stanford University.[citation needed] Casper told the New Yorker in 2002 that it “would be disingenuous for me to
say that the fact that she was a woman, the fact that she was black … weren't in my mind."
Balancing school budget
As Stanford's Provost, Rice was responsible for managing the university's multi-billion dollar budget. The school at that time
was running a deficit of $20 million. When Rice took office, she promised that the budget deficit would be balanced within "two
years." Coit Blacker, Stanford's deputy director of the Institute for International Studies, said there "was a sort of
conventional wisdom that said it couldn't be done ... that [the deficit] was structural, that we just had to live with it." Two
years later, Rice announced that the deficit been eliminated and the university was holding a record surplus of over $14.5
million.[22]
Special interest issues
Rice drew protests when, as provost, she departed from the practice of applying affirmative action to tenure decisions and
unsuccessfully sought to consolidate the university's ethnic community centers.[23]
Private sector
Rice headed Chevron's committee on public policy until she resigned on January 15,
2001, to become National Security
Advisor to President George W. Bush. Chevron honored Rice by naming an oil tanker
Condoleezza Rice after her, but controversy led to its being renamed Altair Voyager.[24]
She also served on the board of directors for the Carnegie Corporation, the Charles Schwab
Corporation, the Chevron Corporation, Hewlett Packard, the Rand Corporation, the
Transamerica Corporation, and other organizations.
In 1992 Rice founded the Center for New Generation, an after-school program created to raise the
high school graduation numbers of East Palo Alto and eastern Menlo Park, California.[25]
Early political career
In 1986, while an international affairs fellow of the Council on Foreign
Relations, Rice served as Special Assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff.
From 1989 through March 1991 (the period of the fall of Berlin Wall and the final days of
the Soviet Union), she served in President George H.W.
Bush's administration as Director, and then Senior Director, of Soviet and East European Affairs in the National Security Council, and a Special Assistant to the President for National
Security Affairs. In this position, Rice helped develop Bush's and Secretary
of State James Baker's policies in favor of German reunification. She impressed Bush, who later introduced her to Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev as the one who "tells me everything I know about the Soviet
Union."[26]
In 1991, Rice returned to her teaching position at Stanford, although she continued to serve as a consultant on the former
Soviet Bloc for numerous clients in both the public and private sectors. Late that year, California Governor Pete Wilson appointed her to a
bipartisan committee that had been formed to draw new state legislative and congressional districts in the state.
In 1997, she sat on the Federal Advisory Committee on Gender-Integrated Training in the Military.
During George W. Bush's 2000 U.S. Presidential election
campaign, Rice took a one-year leave of absence from Stanford University to help
work 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. Rice would later go on to give a noteworthy speech at the 2000 Republican National
Convention. The speech asserted that “…America's armed forces are not a global police force. They are not the world's
911.”[27][28]
National Security Advisor (2001–2005)
On December 17, 2000, Rice was picked to serve as
National Security Advisor and stepped down from her position
at Stanford. She was the first woman to occupy the post. Rice earned the nickname of “Warrior Princess,” reflecting strong nerve
and delicate manners.[29]
During the summer of 2001, Rice met with CIA Director George Tenet on an almost daily basis to discuss the possibilities and prevention of terrorist attacks on
American targets. Notably, on July 10, 2001, Rice met with Tenet
in what he referred to as an "emergency meeting"[30] held
at the White House at Tenet's request to brief Rice and the NSC staff about the potential threat of an al Qaeda attack. Rice responded by asking Tenet to give a presentation on the matter to Secretary Rumsfeld and
(now-former) Attorney General John
Ashcroft.[31]
When asked about the meeting in 2006, Rice asserted she did not recall the specific meeting, commenting that she had met
repeatedly with Tenet that summer about terrorist threats. Moreover, she stated that it was "incomprehensible” to her that
she ignored terrorist threats two months before the September 11
attacks.[32]
Rice was an outspoken proponent of 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.[33]
In March 2004, Rice declined to testify before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks
Upon the United States (the 9/11 Commission). The White House claimed executive privilege under constitutional
separation of powers and cited past tradition. Under pressure, Bush agreed to allow
her to testify[34] so long as it did not create a
precedent of Presidential staff being required to appear before United States
Congress when so requested. Her appearance before the commission on April 8,
2004, was accepted by the Bush administration in part because she was not appearing directly before
Congress. She thus became the first sitting National Security Advisor to testify on matters of policy. In April 2007, Rice
rejected, on grounds of executive privilege, a House subpoena regarding the prewar claim that Iraq sought yellowcake uranium from
Niger.[35]
Leading up to the 2004 U.S. Presidential election, Rice
became the first National Security Advisor to campaign for an incumbent president. She stated that while: "Saddam Hussein had
nothing to do with the actual attacks on America, Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a part of the Middle
East that was festering and unstable, [and] was part of the circumstances that created the problem on September
11."[36]
On January 18, 2003, the Washington Post reported that Rice was involved in crafting Bush's position on race-based
preferences. Rice has stated that "while race-neutral means are preferable," race can be taken into account as "one factor among
others" in university admissions policies.[37]
In a January 10, 2003 interview with CNN's Wolf
Blitzer, Rice made headlines by stating regarding Iraqi WMD: "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."[38]
After the invasion, when Iraq turned out to have no WMD capability, critics called Rice's claims a "hoax," "deception" and
"demagogic scare tactic."[39][40] "Either she missed or overlooked numerous warnings from intelligence agencies
seeking to put caveats on claims about Iraq's nuclear weapons program, or she made public claims that she knew to be false,"
wrote Dana Milbank and Mike Allen in the Washington Post[41]
Rice characterized the August 6, 2001 President’s Daily Brief, “Bin Laden to Strike in US"
historical information. Rice indicated “It was information based on old reporting.”[42] Sean Wilentz of Salon magazine suggested that the PDB contained current
information based on continuing investigations, including that Bin Laden wanted to “bring the fighting to America".[43]
Secretary of State (2005–present)
On November 16, 2004, Bush nominated Rice to be
Secretary of State. On January 26,
2005, the Senate confirmed her nomination by a vote of 85–13. The negative votes, the most cast against any nomination for
Secretary of State since 1825, came from Senators who, according to Boxer, wanted "to hold Dr. Rice and the Bush administration
accountable for their failures in Iraq and in the war on terrorism." Their reasoning was that Rice had acted irresponsibly in
equating Hussein's regime with Islamist terrorism and some could not accept her previous
record. Senator Robert Byrd voted against Rice’s appointment, indicating that she “has
asserted that the President holds far more of the war power than the Constitution grants him.”[44]
On October 30, 2005, Rice attended a memorial service in Montgomery, Alabama, in Rice's home
state, for Rosa Parks, an inspiration for the American Civil Rights Movement. Rice stated, that she and others who
grew up in Alabama during the height of Parks' activism might not have realized her impact on their lives at the time, "but I can
honestly say that without Mrs. Parks, I probably would not be standing here today as secretary of state."[45]
As of September 21, 2007 Secretary Rice has visited
sixty-five countries with a total 658,284 miles and 1385.51 hours (57.73 days) of time.[46]
On October 1, 2007, Rice told children (at New York's Public
School No. 154, the Harriet Tubman Learning Center) that she would not run for president, slept for 6 1/2 hours a night and was
not afraid of war zones. Asked how it felt "to be a lady with such a powerful job", she said: "Sometimes you don't feel
all that powerful." Rangel teasingly suggested Rice aim for the White House.[47]
Major initiatives
As Secretary of State, Rice has championed the expansion of
democratic governments. Rice stated that 9/11 was rooted in “oppression and despair” and so, the U.S. must advance democratic
reform and support basic rights throughout the greater Middle East.[48] Rice has also reformed and restructured the department, as well as U.S. diplomacy as a whole.
"Transformational Diplomacy" is the goal which Rice describes as "work[ing]
with our many partners around the world ... [and] build[ing] and sustain[ing] democratic, well-governed states that will respond
to the needs of their people and conduct themselves responsibly in the international system."[49]
Rice's Transformational Diplomacy involves five core elements:
- Relocating American diplomats to the places in the world where they are needed most, such as China, India, Brazil, Egypt, Nigeria, Indonesia, South Africa, and Lebanon.
- Requiring diplomats to serve some time in hardship locations such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, and Angola; gain
expertise in at least two regions; and become fluent in two foreign languages, such as Chinese, Arabic, or Urdu.
- Focusing on regional solutions to problems like terrorism, drug trafficking, and diseases.
- Working with other countries on a bilateral basis to help them build a stronger infrastructure, and decreasing foreign
nations' dependence on American hand-outs and assistance.
- Creating a high-level position, Director of Foreign Assistance, to oversee U.S. foreign aid,
thus de-fragmenting U.S. foreign assistance.
Rice said that these moves were needed to help "maintain security, fight poverty, and make democratic reforms" in these
countries and would help improve foreign nations' legal, economic,
healthcare, and educational systems.[49] [50]
Another aspect of Transformational Diplomacy is the emphasis on finding regional solutions. Rice also pressed for finding
transnational solutions as well, stating that "in the 21st century, geographic regions are growing ever more integrated
economically, politically and culturally. This creates new opportunities but it also presents new challenges, especially from
transnational threats like terrorism and weapons proliferation and drug smuggling and trafficking in persons and
disease."[49]
Another aspect of the emphasis on regional solutions is the implementation of small, agile, "rapid-response" teams to tackle
problems like disease, instead of the traditional approach of calling on experts in an embassy. Rice explained that this means moving diplomats out of the "back rooms of foreign
ministries" and putting more effort into "localizing" the State Department's diplomatic posture in foreign nations. The Secretary
emphasized the need for diplomats to move into the largely unreached "bustling new population centers" and to spread out "more
widely across countries" in order to become more familiar with local issues and people.[49]
Rice restructured U.S. foreign assistance, naming Randall L. Tobias, an AIDS relief
expert, as administrator of USAID (U.S. Agency for
International Development). Tobias, as a deputy secretary of state, had the job of focusing foreign assistance efforts and
de-fragmenting the disparate aid offices to improve effectiveness and efficiency.[51]
Rice says these initiatives are necessary because of the highly "extraordinary time" in which Americans live. She compares the
moves to the historic initiatives taken after World War II, which she claims helped
stabilize Europe as it is known today. Rice states that her Transformational Diplomacy is not merely about "influencing" or
"reporting on" governments, but "changing people's lives" through tackling the issues like AIDS, the education of women, and the
defeat of violent extremism.[49]
In early 2007, Rice indicated that State Department employees were volunteering in large numbers, yet Defense Secretary
Gates expressed concerns regarding a request from Rice that military personnel fill jobs in Iraq that are the responsibility of
the State Department.[52]
Rice meets with Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas at a trilateral meeting in Jerusalem, Feb 2007
Regional issues
Gaza withdrawal
Rice worked to persuade Israel to withdraw from Palestinian territories and free up commerce
and travel between the two areas. During the summer of 2005, Rice encouraged Israeli leadership
to withdraw from settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. Rice
spent April 2005 raising support among Arab leaders.[53]
In July, she visited the region to "help bring the weight of the United States" to the discussions.[54] In September, Rice hailed the successful withdrawal as a victory
for both Israel and Palestine, saying, "This is an historic moment for both sides, and the commitment of both sides to a
successful disengagement process has been impressive."[55] Gaza is now under Palestinian control once again. However, Palestinians complained that they were
not able to travel through border crossings in and out of Gaza, which had stifled commerce.[54]
Border Crossings Deal
Rice announces brokering of the deal to open Gaza border crossings after a sleepless 48-hour negotiation
In November 2005, Rice renegotiated an opening of the Gaza border crossings.[56] Secretary Rice extended her visit to Jerusalem for a mediation session November 14, meeting alternately with Israel and Palestinian delegations. Rice negotiated differences
between Israel and Palestine that included a proposed blacklist of Palestinians that had been detained by Israel and a concern
that future violence would induce a renewed closure of the border crossings. By November 15,
Rice announced an agreement to open Gaza's borders, with a system of transportation between Gaza and the West Bank, defining
operations for transporting cargo and people across the border and allowing Gaza to reopen its international airport and begin
work on a seaport. This included the Rafah border crossing, Palestine's only land link to a
country other than Israel. It also included monitoring of the crossings by officials from the European Union.[57]
Gideon Levy, reporter for an Israeli newspaper, complained Rice had accomplished little: "in what was considered the
"achievement" of the current visit, Israel also promised to open the Karni crossing. Karni will be open, one can assume, only
slightly more than the "safe passage," which never opened following the previous futile visit."[58]
Hamas, Palestinian elections
Map showing electoral districts and areas of formal Palestinian control (green)
Rice pushed for peaceful, democratic elections in Palestine following the d
