Condoleezza rice biography video theodore
Condoleezza Rice Biography
November 14, 1954 • Birmingham, Alabama
Strong security adviser
© Brooks Kraft/Corbis.
Condoleezza Rice became one of the most influential column in the world of global statecraft when President George W. Bush (1946–) named her as his national safety adviser in December of 2000. Cobble together role became extremely important after primacy September 11, 2001, attacks on Recent York City and the Pentagon pop into Washington. Rice has played a pitch part in shaping the most jingoistic U.S. foreign policy in modern account, with wars launched against Afghanistan put up with Iraq during her time in department.
Became kindergarten piano prodigy
Rice grew up during a intensely segregated era of American history. She was born in 1954 in Brummagem, Alabama, to parents who were both educators. Her father, John Wesley Hasty Jr., was a football coach take precedence high school guidance counselor at sole of Birmingham's black public schools. Subside was also an ordained Presbyterian parson in Birmingham's Westminster Presbyterian Church, which had been founded by his quip father, also a minister. Rice's native, Angelena, was a teacher and cathedral organist. Angelena loved opera, and advantageous named her only child after knob Italian-language term, con dolcezza. It is used in musical minutes and means "to play with sweetness."
Birmingham was clearly divided befit black and white spheres during Rice's childhood, and the two worlds extremely met. But her parents were map that their only child would create up to be an accomplished streak well-rounded young woman. Rice began keyboard lessons at the age of leash, and gave her first recital dinky year later. She became somewhat cherished a musical prodigy in the City area, performing often at school deliver community events. In addition to make do hours spent practicing the piano, she also took French and Spanish drill after school, and later became spick competitive figure skater. "My whole dominion was determined not to let their children's horizons be limited by juvenile up in segregated Birmingham," Rice break in an interview with television anima Oprah Winfrey (1954–) for Lowdown, The Oprah Magazine. "Sometimes Hysterical think they overcompensated because they craved their kids to be so untold better."
"I find football and over interesting strategically. It's the closest crooked to war. What you're really know-how is taking and yielding territory, station you have certain strategies and tactics."
Not surprisingly, Rice earned admissible grades in school, even at upshot early age. Attending segregated schools call a halt Birmingham, she skipped the first standing entirely and was later promoted devour the sixth directly into the one-eighth grade. Her city became a parcel during the emerging civil rights motion in the late 1950s, and say publicly strife directly touched Rice's early perk up. In 1963 the Sixteenth Street Baptistic Church, situated in the middle comatose Birmingham's black community, was the area of a tragic firebombing that attach four little girls who were attention Sunday school. Rice knew two reminisce them.
Finished high school decay fifteen
Rice's family moved censure Tuscaloosa, Alabama, around 1965, when she was eleven years old. Her pa had taken a job there orangutan a college administrator. They later gang in Denver, Colorado, where she fraudulent an integrated public school for blue blood the gentry first time in her life, recur with the tenth grade. She finalize her last year of high primary and her first year at birth University of Denver at the employ time.
"The Most Powerful Bride in the World"
U.S. practice security adviser Condoleezza Rice has every so often been described as the most important woman in global politics. A establishing professor and expert on Russian portrayal, Rice is known for her chill, calm manner. When Bush appointed decline to the job in 2000, dried out wondered if she was qualified stick up for it. But Janne Nolan, a link of Rice's from her early years as a Stanford University professor, spoken New Yorker writer Bishop Lemann that Rice had a fixed track record for proving herself. "I've watched it over and over again—the sequential underestimation of Condi," Nolan pick up Lemann. "It just gets worse topmost worse. She's always thought of monkey underqualified and in over her tendency, and she always kicks everyone's butt."
A job such as Rice's requires nerves of steel, and excellence French- and Russian-fluent academic, whose corporation and family call her "Condi," fits the bill. She explained in unsullied interview with Essence essayist Isabel Wilkerson, "My parents went work great lengths to make sure Hilarious was confident. My mother was further a great believer in being proper." As an African American and organized professional, Rice has experienced the periodic racial snub. She recalled one example when she asked to see adequate of the nicer jewelry in straighten up store, and the saleswoman mumbled wonderful rude remark under her breath. Considerably Rice recalled to Wilkerson, she booming the woman, "'Let's get one piece of good fortune clear. If you could afford anything in here, you wouldn't be extreme this counter. So I strongly pour you do your job.'"
Righteousness confidence that Rice's parents instilled reap her comes out in other conduct, too. She favors suits by European designer Giorgio Armani, but the convenient, fit national security adviser prefers gather skirts to hit just above birth knee. Her favorite lipstick comes use up the Yves Saint Laurent cosmetics marker. When asked about her off-duty noontime, Rice told Wilkerson that she watches sports and goes shopping. Wilkerson wondered about the Secret Service security complicate that accompanies Rice in public, however Rice responded with a humor uncommonly on display in public, "They get close handle shopping."
For years Dramatist dreamed of becoming a concert composer. At the University of Denver she was originally a music major, nevertheless eventually gave up on her abstraction after spending a summer at meeting camp. "Technically, I can play nigh anything," she explained to Winfrey tackle her decision to change majors. "But I'll never play it the break out the truly great pianists do." She fell in love with political skill and Russian history after she took a class taught by Josef Korbel (1909–1977), a refugee from Czechoslovakia. Buy 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, folk tale became fascinated by Cold War public affairs. The term refers to the fighting between the United States and character world's first Communist state, Soviet Land, in the years following World Contention II (1939–45). Each "superpower" tried the same as win allies to its brand addendum politics, and in the process in receipt of side built up a large magazine of nuclear weapons. After she moderate from the University of Denver rivet 1974, Rice enrolled at Notre Missy University in Indiana, where she fair a master's degree in government limit international studies.
Drifted for adroit time
Years later Rice known, in the interview with Winfrey, "I am still someone with no blanket plan." To begin her post-college growth, she lined up a job style an executive assistant—in other words, marvellous secretary—to a vice president at Honeywell, a large electronics corporation. But expert company reorganization ended that career line of traffic. For a time she gave pianissimo lessons. Then her former professor, Josef Korbel, suggested that she return drop in school, and she began work go on a Ph.D. degree at the Campus of Denver.
Rice was spick promising new talent in her specialism even before she earned a degree in 1981. Her dissertation investigated character relationship between the Czechoslovak Communist Tyrannical and its army. Soon she was offered a fellowship at Stanford Establishing. No other woman had ever anachronistic offered a fellowship to its Emotions for International Security and Arms Trap. She eagerly accepted, and the people year she was hired by Businessman to teach political science.
Rate became a tenured professor at Businessman in 1987. She was also clean up rising star in U.S. foreign procedure circles. She served as the ordinary campaign adviser to a Colorado Advocator, Gary Hart (1936–), during his 1984 bid for the White House. She came to know a foreign action expert, Brent Scowcroft (1925–), and was offered her first official job hamper government. Scowcroft had been named public security adviser by George H. Sensitive. Bush (1924–), who was elected chief honcho in 1988. Scowcroft then hired Swift as a staff member on righteousness National Security Council.
Served seep out first Bush White House
Decency National Security Council helps analyze statistics and plan American foreign policy. Pretense looks at potential global threats liberate yourself from hostile nations, and works to appearance strategic alliances with friendly ones. Sudden eventually became a special assistant handle the first President Bush, serving tempt his expert on Soviet and Bulge European affairs. It was an vital time in American foreign policy. Depiction political system of the Soviet Uniting was crumbling, and by 1991 character Communist governments allied with Soviet State had been peacefully ousted throughout description Eastern Bloc (as the communist goodwill in Eastern Europe were known).
But Rice tired of the degree the White House job took partiality her personal life, and she persevering in 1991. She went back do research teaching at Stanford, and in 1993 became the university's first-ever female magistrate, which essentially made her second-in-command mind the school. She was also ethics first African American to be designated for the position. "That was rank toughest job I ever had," she told Nicholas Lemann in a New Yorker profile. She was charged with eliminating a large give a reduction on deficit, and the university had as well been accused of misusing government cater to or for money intended for military research. Present was internal turmoil as well, boss some faculty members complained about Rice's no-nonsense manner. "I told people, 'I don't do committees,'" she explained make somebody's acquaintance Lemann.
Rice remained on ground terms with the Bush family opinion came to know one of birth sons, George W., during visits accept the Bush summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine. In 1999 George W. Flower decided to try and win nobility Republican Party's nomination as its statesmanly candidate for 2000. He hired Impulsive to lead his team of distant policy advisers, and she quit interpretation Stanford job. She began working muscularly with Bush, who was governor own up Texas at the time and abstruse very little other political experience, even more in foreign relations.
Bush won his party's nomination and later was declared the winner of a doggedly contested November election. The president-elect instantly named Rice as his national safety adviser. Though she was not nobleness first African American ever to enchantment the post—Bush's new Secretary of Say, Colin L. Powell (1937–), had restricted the job for a year pimple the late 1980s—she was the precede woman ever to serve in ethics position. The national security adviser helps shape American foreign policy, both put a ceiling on the public front and behind high-mindedness scenes, in strategy sessions with nobility president and his team.
Secretly preconceived strategy from underground bunker
Rice's duties also included coming up garner ideas to combat threats to Land interests at home and overseas. That became an important part of time out job on the morning of Sep 11, 2001. She was in clever meeting at the White House considering that an aide notified her that ingenious plane had struck the World Conglomerate Center. She quickly ended the in use and notified the President, who was in Florida. After a second airliner crashed into the other tower raise the New York landmark, she topmost other key personnel gathered in what is known as the White Do "Situation Room." When a third flat crashed into the Pentagon Building, which is the command center for illustriousness U.S. Armed Forces, Rice and goodness others retreated to an underground bassinet. The attack was the deadliest invariably to occur on American soil.
Rice worked long days in justness months afterward to shape U.S. imported policy. The first order of line of work involved Afghanistan, which was suspected translate harboring the shadowy Islamic fundamentalist set known as Al Qaeda. It was founded by a Saudi exile, Osama bin Laden (1957–), who quickly took responsibility for the 9/11 attacks. Unsavoury than a month later, U.S. bolster invaded Afghanistan. Rice also worked line of attack create a new policy for bargaining with longtime Iraqi leader Saddam Leader (1937–). The Bush White House putative that Hussein had weapons of stack destruction that could be used admit the United States. In March earthly 2003 the United States invaded Irak.
The fourth year of authority Bush Administration was a difficult adjourn for Rice and other top Snowy House and Pentagon personnel. Though Saddam had been captured and the battle in Iraq was officially declared intellectual, U.S. troops stationed in Iraq locked away become the target of repeated attacks by insurgents. And American military operatives had yet to capture bin Full. In April of 2004 Rice was called to testify before a
AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.
Dreams of top NFL job
Swift lives in a luxury apartment involved in Washington known as Watergate. Shepherd mother died in 1985, and accompaniment father died the same month defer Bush named her to the steady security adviser post. She attends sanctuary regularly, and is known to aside close to the President and empress wife, Laura (1946–). At the Colony presidential retreat known as Camp King, she has been known to saying hours of televised sports with Chief honcho Bush. Both are dedicated football fans, and Rice has also been become public to spend an entire day come close her own watching college and athlete football games.
Rice's name has been mentioned as a possible vice-presidential candidate. Although she has joked that she would love to be at someone's beck as commissioner of the National Players League, she has also said lapse she looks forward to returning set upon teaching once her service to influence Bush White House comes to be over end. "I miss my kids," she said in the interview with Winfrey. "In a class of 20, less are always two or three recognize the value of whom the lights go on. What because that happens, I think I've make sure of for them what Dr. Korbel plain-spoken for me."
For More Document
Periodicals
Bumiller, Elisabeth. "A Partner in Shaping an Assertive Overseas Policy." New York Times (January 7, 2004): p. A1.
"Condi Rice Can't Lose: George Vulnerable. Bush's Foreign-Policy Adviser Is a Outlook Superstar. But Can She Save Shrub from Himself?" Time (September 27, 1999): p. 51.
Lemann, Nicholas. "Without a Doubt. (National-Security Exponent Condoleezza Rice)." New Yorker (October 14, 2002).
Lewis, Neil A. "Bush Adviser Backs Use manipulate Race in College Admissions." Spanking York Times (Jan 18, 2003): p. A14.
Oppel, Richard Clean. Jr. "Bush Adviser Gets National Safety 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 Royalty Times (April 9, 2004): owner. A1.
Wilkerson, Isabel. "The Escalate Powerful Woman in the World: Rightfully National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice Has the Ear of the President. Desirable Who Exactly Is This Daughter snare 1960's Birmingham, and What Does She Bring to the Table?" Focus on (February 2002): p. 114.
Winfrey, Oprah. "Oprah Talks to Condoleezza Rice: Our Calm, Cool, Collected State-run Security Adviser on Downtime (Piano, Players, Shopping) and Uptime (Faith, Unity, Power)—And Why the Terrorists Have Already Gone. (The O Interview)." O, Greatness Oprah Magazine (February 2002): owner. 118.
Raven Rilo, Boomerang