Condoleezza Rice

Former Secretary of State

• Born: November 14, 1954
• Birthplace: Birmingham, Alabama

Rice was the first African American and also the first woman to occupy a number of high-ranking positions in academia and government. Under President George W. Bush, she served as national security adviser and then secretary of state, during which time she played a key role in shaping US foreign policy.

Early Life

Condoleezza Rice (KAHN-doh-LEE-zuh) was born in Birmingham, Alabama, the only child of John Wesley Rice Jr., a high school guidance counselor and Presbyterian minister, and Angelena Ray, a teacher. Her mother was a musician, and Rice’s unusual first name derives from the Italian musical term “con dolcezza,” meaning “with sweetness.” During Rice’s childhood, Birmingham was one of the most segregated cities in the South. The family lived in the black middle-class neighborhood of Titusville. Rice’s parents were determined that segregation should not hold their daughter back, however, and saw education as an important tool. She was given books and studied the piano, French, Spanish, ballet, and figure skating. Her mother taught her at home for a year, and when Rice started school in 1961 she was able to skip first grade. Encouraged by her parents to excel, Rice became an exceptional student and a musical prodigy. On a trip to Washington, DC, at the age of twelve, Rice reportedly said that one day she would be in the White House.

During the late 1950s, the dawning of the civil rights movement triggered a wave of racially motivated violence in Birmingham. The Titusville neighborhood was frequently targeted, and Rice’s father joined a nightly armed patrol. In 1963, a Ku Klux Klan firebomb attack on the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church killed four young girls attending Sunday school; one of the victims was a friend of Rice. The next year, the family moved to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where Rice’s father was appointed dean of students at Stillman College. Rice continued to attend segregated schools but became the first African American to study at the music conservatory at Birmingham Southern College. The family moved again in 1969 when John took the post of administrator at the University of Denver.

In Denver, Rice attended an integrated school for the first time. After skipping seventh grade, she completed high school at the age of fifteen. Her parents persuaded her to enroll in the University of Denver as a piano performance major. Although she was a talented pianist who performed with the Denver Symphony Orchestra, Rice was aware of her limitations as a performer. This conviction led her to abandon her dreams of becoming a concert pianist. A new direction appeared after she took a class with Josef Korbel, a Soviet Union specialist from Czechoslovakia. Korbel was the father of Madeleine Albright, who became the first female US secretary of state. Rice grew fascinated by Cold War politics and changed programs to study political science and Russian history.

After graduating at the age of nineteen, Rice earned a master’s degree in government and international studies at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. She then was offered a position at Honeywell, but the company restructured before she could start work. She gave piano lessons for a time until her mentor Korbel suggested she return to academia. Rice began a PhD program at the University of Denver. Her dissertation examined the relationship between the Communist Party and the army in Czechoslovakia.

Life’s Work

Rice received her doctorate at the age of twenty-six and was the first woman to be offered a fellowship at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Arms Control. In the fall of 1981, she was hired to teach political science. She was a popular teacher and received awards for teaching excellence. An expert on the Soviet Union, Rice published a book titled The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army, 1948-1983: Uncertain Allegiance (1984). Another book, The Gorbachev Era, coedited with Alexander Dallin, appeared in 1986.

Rice held fellowships at the Council on Foreign Relations and the Hoover Institution and was also wooed by Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She also began to move in political circles and served as an informal campaign adviser to Democrat Gary Hart during his 1984 presidential campaign. Although Rice’s father had registered as a Republican in 1952 when Democrats in Alabama would not register African Americans to vote, Rice herself registered as a Democrat in 1976 in order to vote for Jimmy Carter. She changed her affiliation to Republican when she became disappointed with Carter’s response to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

In 1984, at a faculty lecture and dinner, Rice met foreign policy expert Brent Scowcroft, then head of President Ronald Reagan’s Commission of Strategic Forces. Scowcroft was named national security adviser by George H. W. Bush when he was elected president in 1988. The next year, Scowcroft appointed Rice to the National Security Council as director of Soviet and East European affairs. She later became senior director and advised the president on international matters, helping to draft American foreign policy during the reunification of East and West Germany and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.

After two years in that post, Rice left her White House job to return to Stanford. In 1993, at age thirty-eight, she was appointed provost of the university, the first African American, first woman, and youngest person ever to hold that position. Faced with the unpopular task of reducing the university’s budget deficit, Rice drew criticism for what some perceived as her inflexible stance. Her decision to withdraw affirmative action when deciding tenure also brought her into conflict with women and minorities. Rice’s individualistic approach was reflected in her involvement as a founding board member of the Center for a New Generation, which ran after-school programs for at-risk children offering tutoring, music lessons, and college-preparatory courses. In 1995, Rice cowrote a book with Philip Zelikow titled Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft. Keen to gain business experience, Rice joined the boards of directors of a number of major corporations.

Rice remained on close terms with the Bush family. On a visit to the family’s summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine, she became friends with George W. Bush, with whom she shared an interest in sports, particularly football. When Bush, then governor of Texas, decided to make a bid for the presidency, Rice left academia to lead his team of foreign policy advisers. In January, 2001, soon after Bush took office, he named Rice his national security adviser, making her the first woman to hold this position. Rice influenced significantly the Bush administration’s foreign policy. She also led the response to the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. After this event, the focus of American foreign policy shifted onto the Middle East and the war on terror was declared. Less than a month after the attacks, US forces invaded Afghanistan, which it accused of providing a base for the Islamic fundamentalist group al-Qaeda. Rice also was an early proponent of US invasion of Iraq.

In April, 2004, Rice was called to testify before a special panel set up to investigate the events of September 11. Displaying customary poise, she fielded questions as to whether, as national security adviser, she had ignored warnings that could have prevented the attacks. When Bush was reelected, Colin Powell resigned as secretary of state. Rice assumed the post on January 26, 2005, becoming the first African American woman to hold that position. A spokeswoman for the Bush regime, Rice developed the concept of transformational diplomacy to meet the new challenges of the twenty-first century and preempt threats to the United States.

As Bush’s second term went on, Iraq descended into civil war and US troops stationed there became the target of attacks by insurgents. As it also emerged that the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had been exaggerated, the administration and Rice in particular came under heavy criticism. As a close confidante of Bush, Rice also was criticized by some for her allegiance to an administration with a poor record on race relations. In 2009, when Bush left the White House, there was speculation about Rice’s future political ambitions. Nevertheless, she returned to her position as political science professor and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. She also cofounded RiceHadleyGates LLC, along with Stephen J. Hadley, who served as national security adviser to President George W. Bush; Robert Gates, secretary of defense under Presidents Bush and Obama; and Anja Manuel, who served in the State Department from 2005 to 2007. In 2010 Rice joined the faculty of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and was named director of the school’s Global Center for Business and the Economy. Her many publications since leaving office include two best-selling memoirs, Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir (2010) and No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington (2011).

In 2013 Rice was hired as a regular contributor for CBS News to comment on national and international events, including President Barack Obama’s second inauguration. That same year she was named to the College Football Playoff Committee. The committee chooses the four teams who will compete in the playoff.

Dropbox, the cloud storage service, appointed Rice to its board of directors in April 2014. Her appointment prompted online activists to call for a boycott of Dropbox to protest her support for the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program, authorized by President Bush in late 2001. Rice has remained on the board despite the protests.

Rice published Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom (2017) a few months after then president Donald Trump's inauguration. In Democracy, Rice argues that promotion of democracy at home and abroad, though difficult to achieve, should drive US foreign policy. She then outlines the role that strong local institutions and foreign support play in building and maintaining democracies. Although she did not directly address Trump's "America First" realpolitik in the book, reviewers noted how the book's arguments seemed to diverge markedly from the president's rhetoric.

By 2021, Rice, a professor of political science at Stanford University, was also the Denning Professor in Global Business and Economy at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. She was concurrently the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution.

Significance

Rice’s career took her from the segregated South during the civil rights era into academia and political office, spheres dominated by white men. One of the most powerful and influential women in America during her time as secretary of state and national security adviser, Rice was involved in major foreign policy decisions made during the post–Cold War period and the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. She attributed her accomplishments primarily to hard work and strong family and religious values. Rice was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been awarded a number of honorary doctorates.

Bibliography

Bumiller, Elisabeth. Condoleezza Rice—An American Life: A Biography. New York: Random House, 2007. This authoritative political biography draws on extensive interviews with Rice, her colleagues, and family.

Dredge, Stuart. “Dropbox Faces Online Protests after Appointing Condoleezza Rice to Board.” Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 11 Apr. 2014. Web. 23 Sept. 2015.

Felix, Antonia. Condi: The Condoleezza Rice Story. New York: Newmarket Press, 2002. A readable and informative portrait of Rice based on interviews with family, friends, and colleagues.

Kessler, Glenn. The Confidante: Condoleezza Rice and the Creation of the Bush Legacy. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007. Based on interviews with Rice and her aides, this is a critical examination of Rice’s rise to power and her role as policy maker.

Mabry, Marcus. Twice as Good: Condoleezza Rice and Her Path to Power. Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale Press, 2007. Provides a detailed examination of Rice’s background and political career and is especially good at uncovering the woman behind the public image.

Mead, Walter Russell. “America First? No, Says Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.” Review of Democracy: The Long Road to Freedom, by Condoleeza Rice. The New York Times, 3 May 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/05/03/books/review/democracy-stories-long-road-to-freedom-condoleezza-rice.html . Accessed 21 July 2021.

Rice, Condoleezza. “A Conversation with Condoleezza Rice.” About Campus 20.2 (2015): 3–7. Print.