In her first return appearance in Washington since leaving the State Department, Condoleezza Rice reflects on her experiences in the Middle East, and her commitment to the education of children as a force against misunderstanding, terror, and war.
As National Security Advisor to a war-time president and then as Secretary of State for the United States, Dr. Rice has pursued peace while defending war. To honor the memory of the great warrior and peacemaker Yitzhak Rabin, former Secretary Rice joins Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic, in a far-ranging discussion on how to think morally and responsibly about the ideal of peace and the reality of war and on how to teach these perspectives in our classrooms.
Bio
Condoleezza Rice
Dr. Condoleezza Rice became Secretary of State on January 26, 2005. Prior to this, she was the assistant to the president for National Security Affairs, commonly referred to as the National Security Advisor, since January, 2001.
In June 1999, she completed a six-year tenure as Stanford University's Provost, during which she was the institution's chief budget and academic officer. As provost, she was responsible for a $1.5 billion annual budget and the academic program involving 1,400 faculty members and 14,000 students.
As professor of political science, Dr. Rice has been on the Stanford faculty since 1981 and has won two of the highest teaching honors -- the 1984 Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching and the 1993 School of Humanities and Sciences Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching.
At Stanford, she has been a member of the Center for International Security and Arms Control, a senior fellow of the Institute for International Studies, and a fellow (by courtesy) of the Hoover Institution. Her books include Germany Unified and Europe Transformed (1995) with Philip Zelikow, The Gorbachev Era (1986) with Alexander Dallin, and Uncertain Allegiance: The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army (1984).
From 1989 through March 1991, the period of German reunification and the final days of the Soviet Union, she served in the Bush Administration as director and then senior director of Soviet and East European Affairs in the National Security Council and as a special assistant to the president for National Security Affairs.
In 1986, while an international affairs fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, she served as special assistant to the director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In 1997, she served on the Federal Advisory Committee on Gender-Integrated Training in the Military.
Rice was a member of the boards of directors for the Chevron Corporation, the Charles Schwab Corporation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the University of Notre Dame, the International Advisory Council of J.P. Morgan, and the San Francisco Symphony Board of Governors.
She was a founding board member of the Center for a New Generation, an educational support fund for schools in East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park, California and was Vice President of the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula.
In addition, her past board service has encompassed such organizations as Transamerica Corporation, Hewlett Packard, the Carnegie Corporation, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, The Rand Corporation, the National Council for Soviet and East European Studies, the Mid-Peninsula Urban Coalition and KQED, public broadcasting for San Francisco.
Born November 14, 1954 in Birmingham, Alabama, Rice earned her bachelor's degree in political science, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver in 1974, her master's from the University of Notre Dame in 1975, and her PhD from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver in 1981.
Rice is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been awarded honorary doctorates from Morehouse College in 1991, the University of Alabama in 1994, the University of Notre Dame in 1995, the National Defense University in 2002, the Mississippi College School of Law in 2003, the University of Louisville and Michigan State University in 2004. She resides in Washington, D.C.
Leon Wieseltier
Leon Wieseltier is literary editor of The New Republic, a post he's held since 1983. He is the author of Kaddish, among other books. His essays on political, literary, and religious subjects have appeared in many publications. He was educated at Columbia College, Balliol College, Oxford, and Harvard University, where he was a member of the Society of Fellows. His small acting career has included a part on "The Sopranos."
I completely agree with you, but I am taken aback by the defense itself. It is a defense based on incompetance of the highest order. If one was to believe that our White House and Intelligence community was so shaken by 911 that they were unable to come up with a good strategy, so they started torturing people. Is that all there is? My confidence in the CIA is broken if this is true. The sad facts are that the twin towers had been bombed before and we knew that they were a prime target. The Bush administration was warned in August, I believe, that there was going to be a hit on America. What were these people doing? Nothing is the answer and now they want our leniency because of this incompetance. What they did by ignoring a clear threat was criminal, and what they have done by torturing, is use the US Constitution as toilet paper. It is unforgiveable and Ms. Rice should be prosecuted for knowingly conspired to violate the US Constitution. Is that treason? I don't know, but it should be
Ms. Rice's explanation of the decisions leading up to our government's sanctioning of torture leaves me with the final impression that through an accident of history, at a critical moment, we were led by a group simply not up to the task. With the notable exceptions of our country's street-rat crazy former second in command and a small cadre of reprehensible administration lawyers who were willingly capable of any sort of ugly madness, the rest of the crew including Rice, just did not have the mental or moral equipment to find the strong and moral path.
As I listen to the rest of her speech and interview, I am reminded that being articulate an being smart or capable are to very separate things.
I invite viewers to the short section to listen to the whole program. Rice's rhetoric is sadly disconnected and shallow.
member. 
