Background

Condoleezza Rice was born on November 14, 1954 in Birmingham, Alabama, United States. The only child of Angelena (Ray) Rice, a high school science, music, and oratory teacher, and John Wesley Rice, Jr., a high school guidance counselor, Presbyterian minister and dean of students at Stillman College, a historically black college in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Rice grew up in the Titusville neighborhood of Birmingham, and then Tuscaloosa, Alabama, at a time when the South was racially segregated.

Her name, Condoleezza, derives from the music-related term con dolcezza, which in Italian means, "with sweetness". Rice has roots in the American South going back to the pre-Civil War era, and some of her ancestors worked as sharecroppers for a time after emancipation. Rice discovered on the PBS series Finding Your Roots that she is of 51% African, 40% European, and 9% Asian or Native American genetic descent, while her mtDNA is traced back to the Tikar people of Cameroon.

Education

Rice began to learn French, music, figure skating and ballet at the age of three. At the age of fifteen, she began piano classes with the goal of becoming a concert pianist.

In 1967, her family moved to Denver, Colorado, and she attended St. Mary's Academy, an all-girls Catholic high school in Cherry Hills Village, Colorado, and graduated at age 16 in 1971. Rice enrolled at the University of Denver, where her father was then serving as an assistant dean.

Rice initially majored in Music, and after her sophomore year, she went to the Aspen Music Festival and School. There she met students of greater talent than herself, and she doubted her career prospects as a pianist. She began to consider an alternative major.

She attended an International Politics course taught by Josef Korbel, which sparked her interest in the Soviet Union and international relations.

In 1974, at age 19, Rice was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Society, and was awarded a B.A., cum laude, in political science by the University of Denver.

Besides, she obtained a master's degree in political science from the University of Notre Dame in 1975.

Rice would also study Russian at Moscow State University in the summer of 1979. In 1981, at age 26, she received her Ph.D. in political science from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. Her dissertation centered on military policy and politics in what was then the communist state of Czechoslovakia.

From 1980 to 1981, she was a fellow at Stanford University's Arms Control and Disarmament Program, having won a Ford Foundation Dual Expertise Fellowship in Soviet Studies and International Security. The award granted a year-long fellowship at Harvard University, Stanford University, Columbia University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology or University of California, Los Angeles. Rice contacted both Harvard and Stanford, but states that Harvard ignored her. Her fellowship at Stanford began her academic affiliation with the University and time in Northern California.

Career

Condoleezza Rice began her career as an intern at the State Department under the Carter administration while pursuing an academic fellowship at Stanford University. She was hired by Stanford University as an assistant professor of political science in 1981-1987. Besides, 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. She was then promoted to associate professor in 1987, a post she held until 1993. Rice was a specialist on the Soviet Union and gave lectures on the subject for the Berkeley-Stanford joint program led by UC Berkeley Professor George W. Breslauer in the mid-1980s.

At a 1985 meeting of arms control experts at Stanford, Rice's performance drew the attention of Brent Scowcroft, who had served as National Security Advisor under Gerald Ford. With the election of George H. W. Bush, Scowcroft returned to the White House as National Security Adviser in 1989, and he asked Rice to become his Soviet expert on the United States National Security Council. According to R. Nicholas Burns, President Bush was "captivated" by Rice, and relied heavily on her advice in his dealings with Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. Thus, Rice became the National Security Council as the Soviet and Eastern Europe Affairs Advisor to President George H. W. Bush during the dissolution of the Soviet Union and German reunification from 1989 to March 1991. In this position, Rice wrote what would become known as the "Chicken Kiev speech" in which Bush advised the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament, against independence. She also 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".

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.

Because Rice would have been ineligible for tenure at Stanford if she had been absent for more than two years, she returned there in 1991, 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.

Condoleezza Rice served at Stanford as provost from 1993 to 1999. She also was granted tenure and became full professor. Moreover, Rice was the first female, first African-American, and youngest Provost in Stanford's history.

As Stanford's Provost, Rice was responsible for managing the university's multibillion-dollar budget. The school at that time was running a deficit of $20 million. When Rice took office, she promised that the budget 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 had been eliminated and the university was holding a record surplus of over $14.5 million. In addition, in 1997, she sat on the Federal Advisory Committee on Gender-Integrated Training in the Military.

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. 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."

On December 17, 2000, Rice was named as National Security Advisor and stepped down from her position at Stanford. She was the first black woman to occupy the post. She went on to become the first black woman to serve as U.S. Secretary of State - she became the nation's 66th Secretary of State in 2004, following Colin Powell's resignation, and served from January 2005 to 2009.

As Secretary of State, Rice dedicated her department to "Transformational Diplomacy", with a mission of building and sustaining democratic, well-governed states around the world and the Middle East in particular.

To that end, she relocated American diplomats to such hardship locations as Iraq, Afghanistan and Angola, and required them to become fluent in two foreign languages. She also created a high-level position to defragment U.S. foreign aid.

Rice also works tirelessly to educate the public on international relations. In 2009, when her appointment as Secretary of State ended, Rice returned to teaching. She has published several books including her two autobiographies. Currently Rice works as the Denning Professor in Global Business and Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She also serves on the board of several companies including the Boys and Girls Club. Although she did not pursue a career as a musician, Rice continues to play the piano. She also supports the arts through several charities. While working in Washington DC, Rice took up golfing as a leisure activity. In 2012, her leisure activity gained her another first. She became one of the first female members admitted to Augusta National Golf Club, an organization that had excluded women for 80 years.

In addition, Rice also authored some books, including "Uncertain Allegiance: The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army" (1984), "The Gorbachev Era" (1986) with Alexander Dallin, and "Germany Unified and Europe Transformed" (1995) with Philip Zelikow.

In September 2010, she became a director of the Stanford Graduate School of Business' Global Center for Business and the Economy. Besides, in August 2015, High Point University announced that Rice would speak at the 2016 commencement ceremony. Her commencement address was highlighted by The Huffington Post, Fortune, Business Insider, NBC News, Time, and USA Today.

Rice's book "Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom" was published on May 9, 2017. Besides, in May 2017, Rice said that alleged Russian hacking of DNC emails should "absolutely not" delegitimize Donald Trump's presidency. In May 2018, Rice and co-author Amy Zegart's book "Political Risk: How Businesses and Organizations Can Anticipate Global Insecurity" was published.

Condoleezza Rice is currently on the Board of Directors of Dropbox and Makena Capital Management, LLC.

Achievements

• 

  Condoleezza Rice is known as President Bush's National Security Advisor during his first term, making her the first woman to serve in that position. She also served as the 66th United States Secretary of State, the second person to hold that office in the administration of President George W. Bush. Rice was the first female African-American Secretary of State, as well as the second African-American Secretary of State, and the second female Secretary of State.
  
  Moreover, as a professor at Stanford, she won the 1984 Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching and the 1993 School of Humanities and Sciences Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching. In 2002, Rice was the recipient of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People Image Award.
  
  In addition, from 2004 to 2007, Time Magazine named Rice as one of the World's Most Influential People. Between 2005 and 2008, Forbes magazine named her as one of the 100 Most Powerful Women. Rice was also listed as one of the 10 Most Fascinating People of 2005 by Barbara Walters Special, one of the Most Influential Black Americans by Ebony magazine in 2006-2008 and one of the 50 Most Powerful People in D.C. by Gentlemen’s Quarterly Magazine in 2007. She became also Glamour's Women of the Year in 2008.
  
  Besides, in 2017 she received the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun.
  
  Moreover, Condoleezza Rice has received honorary degrees from many universities, including the following: Doctor of Laws from Morehouse College in 1991; Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Alabama in 1994; Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame in 1995; Doctor of National Security Affairs from the National Defense University in 2002; Doctor of Laws from Mississippi College School of Law in 2003; Doctor of Public Service from the University of Louisville in 2004; Doctor of Humane Letters from the Michigan State University in spring 2004; Doctor of Laws from Boston College on May 22, 2006; Doctor of Letters from the Air University on April 14, 2008; Doctor of Laws from Johnson C. Smith University in 2010; Doctor of Laws from Southern Methodist University on May 12, 2012; Doctor of Public Service from the College of William and Mary in May 2015; and Doctor of Civil Law from Sewanee: The University of the South on May 12, 2018.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army, 1948-1983
  • Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family
  • Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft
  • Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom
  • Condoleezza Rice: A Memoir of My Extraordinary, Ordinary Family and Me
  • No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington
  • The Gorbachev Era
  • The Strategy of Campaigning: Lessons from Ronald Reagan and Boris Yeltsin
  • Political Risk: How Businesses and Organizations Can Anticipate Global Insecurity

Religion

Rice is an adherent of Presbyterian Protestantism.

Politics

Condoleeza Rice 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, and because of the influence of her father, who was Republican. As she told 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."

Rice is often described as a centrist or moderate Republican. On The Issues, a non-partisan organization which rates candidates based on their policy positions, considers Rice to be a centrist. She takes both liberal and conservative positions; she is pro-choice on abortion, supports gun rights, opposes same-sex marriage but supports civil unions, and supports building oil pipelines such as the Keystone XL pipeline.

Rice's policy as Secretary of State viewed counter-terrorism as a matter of being preventative, and not merely punitive. Rice has also been a frequent critic of the intelligence community's inability to cooperate and share information, which she believes is an integral part of preventing terrorism.

Rice also has promoted the idea that counterterrorism involves not only confronting the governments and organizations that promote and condone terrorism, but also the ideologies that fuel terrorism. In a speech given on July 29, 2005, Rice asserted that "securing America from terrorist attack is more than a matter of law enforcement. We must also confront the ideology of hatred in foreign societies by supporting the universal hope of liberty and the inherent appeal of democracy."

In January 2005, during Bush's second inaugural ceremonies, Rice first used the term "outposts of tyranny" to refer to countries Rice thought to threaten world peace and human rights. This term has been called a descendant of Bush's phrase, "Axis of Evil", used to describe Iraq, Iran and North Korea. She identified six such "outposts" in which she said the United States has a duty to foster freedom: Cuba, Zimbabwe, Burma and Belarus, as well as Iran and North Korea.

Besides, Rice has taken a centrist approach to "race and gender preferences" in affirmative action policies. She described affirmative action as being "still needed," but she does not support quotas.

In addition, Condoleezza Rice supported the comprehensive immigration plan backed by the Bush administration and shared that it was among her regrets that it did not pass through Congress. In 2014, Rice criticized the Obama administration from seeking to approve immigration reforms through executive action. In February 2017 Rice publicly announced her opposition to the Trump administration's travel ban.

While Rice does not support same-sex marriage, she does support civil unions. In 2010, Rice stated that she believed "marriage is between a man and a woman... But perhaps we will decide that there needs to be some way for people to express their desire to live together through civil union." When asked to select a view on a survey, Rice selected a response that said: "Same-sex couples should be allowed to form civil unions, but not marry in the traditional sense."

Concerning Confederate monuments issues, in May 2017, Rice said she opposes the removal of Confederate monuments and memorials or the renaming of buildings named after Confederate generals. She argued: "If you forget your history, you're likely to repeat it. When you start wiping out your history, sanitizing your history to make you feel better, it's a bad thing."

Views

Rice stated that growing up during racial segregation taught her determination against adversity, and the need to be "twice as good" as non-minorities. Segregation also hardened her stance on the right to bear arms.

However, when in August 2005, American musician, actor, and social activist Harry Belafonte, who serves on the Board of TransAfrica, referred to blacks in the Bush administration as "black tyrants", Rice dismissed these criticisms during a September 14, 2005 interview when she said, "Why would I worry about something like that? The fact of the matter is I've been black all my life. Nobody needs to tell me how to be black."

Quotations: "Punish France, ignore Germany, and forgive Russia."

"Protests are a part of our democratic heritage and our democratic privilege... US and British efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq are finally getting those countries to the place that actually people might have the same privilege of protest."

"Oh, indeed there is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11. It’s not that Saddam Hussein was somehow himself and his regime involved in 9/11, but, if you think about what caused 9/11, it is the rise of ideologies of hatred that lead people to drive airplanes into buildings in New York."

"As I was telling my husb - As I was telling President Bush."

"People may oppose you, but when they realize you can hurt them, they'll join your side."

"When are we going to stop making excuses for the terrorists and saying that somebody is making them do it? No, these are simply evil people who want to kill."

"The United States has been very clear that we did have to have some political basis to make clear that that cessation of hostilities was not going to countenance a return to the status quo ante. This resolution does that. And now we're going to see who is for peace and who isn't."

"It's bad policy to speculate on what you'll do if a plan fails, when you're trying to make a plan work."

"In any country, if you don't have countervailing institutions, the power of any one president is problematic for democratic development."

"I think my father thought I might be president of the United States. I think he would've been satisfied with secretary of state. I'm a foreign policy person and to have a chance to serve my country as the nation's chief diplomat at a time of peril and consequence, that was enough."

"I'll go back and be a happy Stanford faculty member. And, obviously, I'll do what I can to help this ticket. But my life is in Palo Alto. My future is with my students at Stanford and in public service on issues that I care about like education reform."

"I find football so interesting strategically. It's the closest thing to war. What you're really doing is taking and yielding territory, and you have certain strategies and tactics."

Membership

While at the University of Denver, Rice was a member of Alpha Chi Omega, Gamma Delta chapter.

Condoleezza Rice was a senior fellow of The Hoover Institution in Stanford, California, in 1991-1993 and 1999-2001. She was also a senior fellow on public policy of Thomas & Barbara Stephenson, since 2009.

Rice was a member of special advisory panel to Commander and chief strategic air commissioned and a member of governor independent advisory redistricting state of California in 1991. She was also a member of the United States Delegation to 2+4 talks on German Unification.

Rice was also a member of board of directors at Chevron Corporation, Transamerica Corporation, and Charles Schwab Corporation, all between 1991 and 2001.

As Secretary of State, Rice was ex officio a member of the Board of Trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

In September 2010, she became a faculty member of the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

On August 20, 2012, Rice was announced as one of the first two women to be admitted as members to Augusta National Golf Club. On October 16, 2013, Rice was selected to be one of the thirteen inaugural members of the College Football Playoff selection committee.

Condoleezza Rice was also a member of the American Political Science Association, American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies and is a member of Council on Foreign Relations.

• The Hoover Institution , United States

  1991 - 1993

• Chevron Corporation , United States

  1991 - 2001

• Transamerica Corporation , United States

  1991 - 2001

• Charles Schwab Corporation , United States

  1991 - 2001

• Augusta National Golf Club , United States

  August 20, 2012

• College Football Playoff selection committee , United States

  October 16, 2013

Personality

Rice described herself as a terrible long-term planner.

Besides, she has also played piano in public since she was a young girl. 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 does not play professionally, but has 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. She performed briefly during her cameo appearance in the "Everything Sunny All the Time Always" episode of 30 Rock.

Quotes from others about the person

• Colin Powell: "Condi was raised first and foremost to be a lady. She was raised in a protected environment to be a person of great self-confidence in Birmingham, where there was no reason to have self-confidence because you were a tenth-class citizen and you were black."
  
  Don Ornstein: "Condoleezza Rice serves an administration that has trashed the basic values of academia: reason, science, expertise, and honesty. Stanford should not welcome her back."
  
  Wiam Wahhab: "They are welcome to all the money I have in America. Rice should take half of it to improve the way she looks. She should have her teeth straightened and her face fixed, and should make herself look nice. I donate what is left to George Bush, because I know he will soon be admitted to a mental asylum because of his policies."
  
  Marc Landy: "Miss Rice presides over a wide range of choices, a wide range of policies. She's handled that vast duty with dignity, with honour."

Interests

• reading books, playing the piano

• Sport & Clubs

  tennis, jogging, fitness

• Music & Bands

  Johannes Brahms, Led Zeppelin

Connections

Rice has never married and has no children. In the 1970s, she dated and was briefly engaged to professional American football player Rick Upchurch but left him because, according to biographer Marcus Mabry, she knew the relationship wasn't going to work.

From 2003 to 2017, Rice co-owned a home in Palo Alto, California, with Randy Bean. According to public records, the two initially purchased the home with a third investor, Stanford University professor Coit D. Blacker, who later sold his line of credit to the two women. The property arrangement was first revealed in Glenn Kessler's 2007 book The Confidante: Condoleezza Rice and the Creation of the Bush Legacy, sparking rumors about the nature of Rice and Bean's relationship.

However, in September 2006, The New York Times reported on possible close relations between Rice and Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay.

Father:

John Wesley Rice, Jr.

In July 1989, her father, John Wesley Rice, married Clara Bailey, to whom he remained married until his death in December 2000, age seventy-seven.

Mother:

Angelena (Ray) Rice

Her mother, Angelena Rice, died of breast cancer in August 1985 at the age of sixty-one, when Condoleezza was thirty.

Stepmother:

Clara Bailey

Partner:

Rick Upchurch

Friend:

Randy Bean

Acquainted:

Peter MacKay

References

• Condoleezza Rice: First Woman National Security Advisor
• The Confidante: Condoleezza Rice and the Creation of the Bush Legacy
• Condoleezza Rice: Journey to Freedom
• Condoleezza Rice: An American Life
• Condoleezza Rice: A Biography
• The Faith of Condoleezza Rice
• Condoleezza Rice