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Madeleine Korbel Albright (born May 15, 1937) served as the 64th United States Secretary of State. She currently serves as the Mortara Distinguished Professor of Diplomacy at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
Madeleine Albright was nominated by President Bill Clinton on December 5, 1996, as Secretary of State. After being unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate, she was sworn in as the 64th Secretary of State on January 23, 1997. Albright was the first woman Secretary of State.
Personal information
Madeleine Albright was born Marie Jana Korbelová in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic), and raised Roman Catholic by her parents, who had converted to Catholicism from Judaism in order to escape persecution. Madeleine was the French version of “Madlenka”, a Czech nickname given by her grandmother. Albright adopted the new name when she attended a Swiss boarding school.
In 1939, the Korbel family fled to England after Bohemia and Moravia were annexed by Germany in 1939. That may have saved her life, as many of her Jewish relatives in Czechoslovakia were killed in the Holocaust. After World War II, the Korbel family moved to Belgrade, where her father Josef Korbel served as the country’s ambassador to Yugoslavia.
She and her parents moved to the United States in 1948 when the Communists assumed power in Czechoslovakia. She attended school in Switzerland, and later Wellesley College in USA. She became a U.S. citizen in 1957. In May 1959 she married Chicago newspaper journalist Joseph Medill Patterson Albright, with whom she had three daughters. They divorced in 1982.
In 1996, Albright discovered that her grandparents had been murdered at Auschwitz and Terezin. Albright has stated that she did not know she was Jewish until she was an adult.
Albright is multilingual, being fluent in English, French, and Czech, with good speaking and reading abilities in Russian, German, Polish and Serbo-Croatian .
After her retirement, Albright published her memoir, Madam Secretary (2003) ISBN 0786868430.
Academic and public career
Madeleine Albright graduated from Kent Denver high school in 1955. Awarded a B.A. from Wellesley College with honors in Political Science, she studied at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, received a Certificate from the Russian Institute at Columbia University, and her Masters and Doctorate from Columbia University’s Department of Public Law and Government. She was also awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Winnipeg in 2005.
From 1978 to 1981, as both a staff member of the White House and the National Security Council, Albright was an important Carter Administration official responsible for the formulation of foreign policy legislation. From 1976 to 1978, she served as Chief Legislative Assistant to Senator Edmund Muskie.
From 1981 to 1982, Secretary Albright was awarded a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian Institution following an international competition in which she wrote about the role of the press in political changes in Poland during the early 1980s.
From 1981 to 1982 she also served as a Senior Fellow in Soviet and Eastern European Affairs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, conducting research in developments and trends in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
In 1981 she co-founded the Center for National Policy. She also served as President of the organization.
In 1982, Albright was appointed Research Professor of International Affairs and Director of Women in Foreign Service Program at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. She taught undergraduate and graduate courses in international affairs, U.S. foreign policy, Russian foreign policy, and Central and Eastern European politics, and was responsible for developing and implementing programs designed to enhance women’s professional opportunities in international affairs. Before becoming Secretary of State, Albright served as a member of President Clinton’s Cabinet. Today, Secretary Albright is once again a professor at Georgetown.
Ambassador to the UN
Albright was appointed ambassador to the UN, her first diplomatic post, shortly after Clinton was inaugurated, presenting her credentials on February 9, 1993. During her tenure at the UN, she had a rocky relationship with the United Nations Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali. She did not under take action against the genocide in Rwanda. “it was a very very very difficult time, the situation was so unclear. You know in retrospect it all looks very clear” – Madeleine Albright in the PBS Documentary “Ghosts of Rwanda”.
In 1996, she made highly controversial remarks in an interview with Leslie Stahl on CBS’s Sixty Minutes. Asked by Stahl with regards to effect of sanctions against Iraq: “We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” Albright replied: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it.” When asked about this remark in 2005 she said “I never should have made it, it was stupid”, but she still supported the concept of tailored sanctions.
Secretary of State
As Secretary of State, Albright incurred the wrath of many Serbs in the former Yugoslavia because of her perceived anti-Serb position and her role in participating in the formulation of U.S. policy during the Kosovo War and Bosnian war as well as the rest of the Balkans. From Bosnia, international news reports and video footage showed Bosnian men detainees in concentration camps down to skin and bones. John Fox, a US State Department specialist told Peter Jennings of ABC News that he was told not to tell the truth: “We could not continue to confirm the existence of concentration camps.” He said the order came from a very senior official “on the seventh floor of the State Department”. ABC News executive producer David Gelber told Jennings: “Imagine that the US government knew there were concentration camps in Bosnia and wouldn’t confirm it because they didn’t want political pressure put on them to do something about it.”
In 1998, at the 50th anniversary NATO summit, Albright articulated what would become known as the “three Ds” of NATO weapons policy: that there must be no decoupling of the United States from NATO, duplication of effort or resources, or discrimination against NATO allies.
In 2000, Secretary Albright became one of the highest level Western diplomats to ever meet Kim Jong-il, the reclusive leader of North Korea.
Post-2001
Following Albright’s term as U.S. Secretary of State, many speculated that she might pursue a career in Czech politics. Czech President Vaclav Havel openly talked about the possibility of Albright succeeding him after he retired in 2002.
On October 25, 2005, Albright guest starred on the TV drama Gilmore Girls as herself. She appeared in a dream with Rory (Alexis Bledel) as Rory’s mother.
On January 5, 2006, she participated in a meeting at the White House of former Secretaries of Defense and State to discuss United States foreign policy with Bush administration officals.
Albright currently serves as chairwoman of National Democratic Institute for International Affairs.
Source: Wikipedia
