Madeleine Albright

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Madeleine Jana Korbel Albright (born Marie Jana Korbelová; May 15, 1937) is an American politician and diplomat.

Albright immigrated from Czechoslovakia in 1948, becoming the first female United States Secretary of State in the United States, from 1997 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton.

In 1957, her father, diplomat Josef Korbel, married the family in Denver, Colorado, and she became a United States citizen.

Albright earned a PhD from Columbia University in 1975 and wrote her dissertation on the Prague Spring.

She served as an aide to Senator Edmund Muskie before joining the National Security Council under Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Albright joined Georgetown University's academic faculty and aided Democratic candidates regarding foreign policy until 1981, when President Jimmy Carter left office.

Albright helped form his National Security Council following Clinton's victory in the 1992 presidential election.

Clinton nominated her to the position of US ambassador in 1993. Ambassador to the United Nations.

She served as Secretary of State until 1997, when she succeeded Warren Christopher as Secretary of State.

Albright served in that capacity until Clinton resigned in 2001. Albright has been Chair of the Albright Stonebridge Group since 2009.

She is the Michael and Virginia Mortara Endowed Distinguished Professor in Diplomacy at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.

U.S. President Barack Obama gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in May 2012.

Secretary Albright also serves on the Board of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Personal life

In 1959, Albright married Joseph Albright. Before divorcing in 1982, the couple had three children. She had been raised Roman Catholic but she was converted to Episcopal Church at her marriage in 1959. Her parents went from Judaism to Catholicism in 1941, while still in Czechoslovakia, to avoid anti-Jewish persecution before they immigrated to the United States. They never discussed their Jewish ancestry with her later.

When Albright's Jewish ancestry was revealed shortly after she had been appointed Secretary of State in 1997, she said it was a "major surprise." Both her parents were born and raised in Jewish families until age 59, Albright said. Up to a dozen of her relatives in Czechoslovakia, including three of her grandparents, had been killed in the Holocaust.

Albright also spoke French, German, Polish, and Serbo-Croatian in addition to English, Russian, and Czech. She also understood spoken Slovak.

In several interviews, Albright talked about her physical fitness and exercise regimen. She said she could leg press 400 pounds (180 kg) in 2006. The Guardian named Albright as one of the fifty best-dressed over 50s in March 2013.

On March 23, 2022, Albright died of cancer in Washington, D.C., at the age of 84. Many political figures, including US president Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, all paid their respects to her, including former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

President Joe Biden, former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, and former secretaries of state Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice, as well as Georgia's president, Vjosa Osmani, attended her funeral, which took place at Washington National Cathedral on April 27.

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Early life and career

Marie Jana Korbelová was born in 1937 in Prague's Smchov district, Czechoslovakia's Smchov district. Josef Korbel, a Czech diplomat, and Anna Korbel (née Spieglová) were her parents. Czechoslovakia had been unemployed for less than 20 years after being ruled by Austria-Hungary following World War I. Her father, Tomák and Edvard Bene, was a fan of his brother. Katherine and a younger brother John were younger siblings (these versions of their names are Anglicized).

Marie Jana's father was working as a press attaché at Belgrade's Czechoslovak Embassy. Because of the family's relationship with Bene, the Munich Agreement, and Adolf Hitler's troops' takeover of Czechoslovakia, pushed the family into exile.

In 1941, Josef and Anna converted from Judaism to Catholicism. Marie Jana and her siblings were raised in the Roman Catholic faith. Albright said that her parents never told her or her two siblings of their Jewish roots and roots in 1997.

In May 1939, the family immigrated to Britain. Her father served for Bene's Czechoslovak government-in-exile. Her family lived on Kensington Park Road in Notting Hill, London, where they survived the worst of the Blitz to be—but then moved to Beaconsfield, Walton-on-Thames, on London's outskirts. They had a large metal table in the house, which was supposed to shield the family from the constant danger of German air raids. Marie Jana was one of the children on display in a documentary film in London that was supposed to foster compassion for war refugees.

The Korbel family returned to Prague after the defeat of the Nazis in the European theatre of World War II and the destruction of Nazi Germany and Moravia's Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Korbel was appointed as press attaché at the Czechoslovakian Embassy in Yugoslavia, and the family's transfer to Belgrade, the former Yugoslav republic ruled by the Communist Party. Korbel was worried that his daughter would be exposed to Marxism in a Yugoslav school, and so she was taught privately by a governess before being sent to the Prealpina Institut pour Jeunes Filles finishing school in Chexbres, Switzerland. While in Switzerland, she learned to speak French and changed her name from Marie Jana to Madeleine.

In 1948, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia took over the government, with help from the Soviet Union. Korbel was forced to resign from his position as an enemy of communism. He later took up a job with a United Nations delegation to Kashmir. As he arrived to present his report to the United Nations Headquarters, then headquartered in Lake Success, New York, he sent his family to the United States by way of London.

Korbel's family immigrated from the United Kingdom on the SS America, leaving Southampton on November 5, 1948, and arriving on Ellis Island in New York Harbor on November 11, 1948. The family lived in Long Island's North Shore. Korbel applied for political asylum, arguing that being a critic of Communism, he was under attack in Prague. "I can't, of course, return to the Communist Czechoslovakia as I will be arrested for my faithful adherence to the democratic ideals," Korbel said. "I would be most grateful to you if you could kindly inform his Excellency, Secretary of State John Kerry, that I beg of him to stay in the United States, which is the same right granted to my wife and three children."

Korbel obtained a position on the University of Denver's political science department with the support of Philip Moseley, a Russian language professor at Columbia University in New York City. He became dean of the university's international relations department and then taught prospective US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. In 2008, the Josef Korbel School of International Studies was named in his honor.

Madeleine Korbel spent her teen years in Denver and graduated from the Kent Denver School in Cherry Hills Village, a Denver suburb. She founded the school's international relations club and was the school's first president. She graduated in 1959 from Wellesley College, Massachusetts, on a full scholarship, majoring in political science, and majoring in political science. Zdenk Fierlinger, a former Czechoslovakian prime minister, was the subject of her senior thesis. She became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1957 and joined the College Democrats of America.

Korbel served as an intern for The Denver Post while living in Denver. Joseph Albright was visiting Joseph Albright at the University of Albright. He was the nephew of Alicia Patterson, the owner of Newsday and the wife of philanthropist Harry Frank Guggenheim. At the time of her marriage, Korbel converted to the Episcopal Church. The couple married in Wellesley in 1959, just after her graduation. Joseph completed his military service at nearby Fort Leonard Wood while Joseph lived in Rolla, Missouri. Albright served at The Rolla Daily News during this period.

In January 1960, Joseph and Mary Hopkins married in Chicago, Illinois. Joseph served as a reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times, and Albright worked as a picture editor for Encyclopdia Britannica. Joseph Albright started working at Newsday in New York City in the first year, and the couple migrated to Garden City on Long Island in the following year. Alice Patterson Albright and Anne Korbel Albright gave birth to twin daughters, Alice Patterson Albright and Anne Korbel Albright, both at the age of 19. The twins were born six weeks early and required a long hospital stay. Albright began Russian language classes at Hofstra University in the Village of Hempstead nearby, as a distraction.

The family migrated to Washington, D.C., where they lived in Georgetown in 1962. Albright spent time in Russia at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, a division of Johns Hopkins University in the capital, studying international relations and continuing in Russia.

Joseph Patterson's aunt, Alicia Patterson, died in 1963, and the Albrights returned to Long Island with the intention of Joseph taking over the family newspaper company. Katharine Medill Albright, Albright's daughter, was born in 1967. She continued her studies at Columbia University's Department of Public Law and Government. (It was later renamed the political science branch, and it is now located within the School of International and Public Affairs.) She obtained a certificate in Russian from the Russian Institute (now Harriman Institute), as an M.A. She wrote her master's thesis on the Soviet diplomatic corps and her doctoral dissertation on journalists in the Prague Spring of 1968. She later became her boss at the US National Security Council after taking a graduate course under Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Career

Albright graduated from Columbia in 1968 with her doctor of philosophy degree. She began fund-raising for her daughters' school, which led to numerous positions on education boards. She was then invited to host a fund-raising dinner for the 1972 presidential campaign of the United States. Senator Ed Muskie of Maine, a Senator. Muskie's career culminated in him serving as his chief legislative assistant in 1976. However, after Jimmy Carter's 1976 US presidential nomination, Albright's former professor Brzezinski, was named National Security Advisor, Albright's former professor Brzezinski, was promoted to serve in the West Wing as the National Security Council's legislative liaison, Albright's former professor Brzezinski was named as the National Security Advisor. Albright, a widow of Carter's 1980 loss to Ronald Reagan, moved to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., where she was given a grant for a research project. She decided to write about the dissident journalists involved in Poland's Solidarity movement, which was then in its infancy but at the forefront of international attention. She went to Poland for her study, interviewing dissidents in Gda, Warsaw, and Kraków. Her husband declared his intention to divorce her on her return to Washington in order to pursue a new woman.

Albright joined Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in 1982, specializing in Eastern European studies. She also supervised the university's women's study in international politics. She served as a high-end Democratic Party foreign policy advisor, briefing vice president Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and 1988 (both campaigns failed). Bill Clinton returned the White House to the Democratic Party in 1992, and Albright was sent by the White House to oversee the transition to a new administration at the National Security Council. Clinton nominated her to serve as the United States ambassador to the United Nations in January 1993, her first diplomatic post.

Albright was named ambassador to the United Nations, a Cabinet-level post, just after Clinton was inaugurated, a long way of representing her credentials on February 9, 1993. During her time at the United Nations General Assembly, she had a turbulent relationship with Boutros Boutros-Ghali, whom she described as "disengaged" and "neglect[ful]" of Rwanda's genocide. "My deepest regret from my time in public service is that the US and the international community didn't take action faster to stop these crimes from happening," Albright wrote.

Roméo Dallaire's book Shake Hands with the Devil, Roméo Dallaire writes that in 1994, in Albright's role as the United States, the nation's president, he wrote that in Shake Hands with the Devil. She avoided describing the killings in Rwanda as "genocide" before being overwhelmed by the facts; this is now how she described them in her memoirs. She was asked to advocate for a decrease or withdrawal of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (something that never happened), but was later given more freedom. "It was a very difficult time," Albright said in PBS' Ghosts of Rwanda, "it was a very difficult time," he said later, and the situation was unclear." It all seems to be very straightforward in retrospect. However, if you were [there] at the time, it was uncertain what was going on in Rwanda."

"This is not cojones," Cuban military pilots shot down two small civilian aircraft flown by the Cuban-American exile group Brothers to the Rescue over international waters. This is cowardice." The line endeared her to President Clinton, who said it was "probably the most effective one-liner in the entire administration's foreign policy." Albright was greeted with chants of "libertad" as she attended a memorial service in Miami on March 2, 1996.

Albright decided in 1996 that they would work with Richard Clarke, Michael Sheehan, and James Rubin to overthrowrown U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who had been running unopposed for a second term in the 1996 election. Boutros-Ghali, the United States' political scapegoat, after 15 U.S. peacekeepers died in a failed attempt in Somalia in 1993. To express their trepidation that other nations will join the United States, they dubbed the initiative "operation Orient Express." Although every other member of the United Nations Security Council voted for Boutros-Ghali, the US refused to relinquish international pressure to withdraw its veto. Boutros-Ghali withdrew his candidacy and became the only United Nations secretary-general to be refused a second term after four tumultuous meetings of the Security Council. The United States then fought a four-round veto duel with France, causing the country to pull out and recognize Kofi Annan as the next secretary general. Clarke's memoirs said that "the entire operation had increased Albright's hand in the campaign to be Secretary of State in the second Clinton administration."

Following his re-election in January 1997, Clinton ordered a new Secretary of State as incumbent Warren Christopher was retiring. The Clinton administration's top staff was divided into two camps on how to choose the new foreign policy. Senator Leon Panetta of Georgia, Senator George J. Mitchell of Maine, and former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke all favored Albright, but a separate faction headed for different candidates, including outgoing Chief of Staff Leon Panetta. Albright orchestrated a campaign for her own cause that was fruitful. On January 23, 1997, Albright became the first female U.S. Secretary of State and the highest-ranking woman in the US government at the time of her appointment. She was not eligible as a presidential replacement because she was not a natural-born citizen of the United States.

Albright had a major influence on American foreign policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as the Middle East during her tenure. President Clinton committed to deploy American troops to Bosnia to enforce the deal, as Albright had strongly suggested. "What's the point of saving this awesome military for, Colin, if we can't use it?" Albright's memoirs asked, "What's the point of saving this superb military for, if we can't use it?" Against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Albright pushed for stronger economic sanctions in the United States.

On July 1, 1997, she represented the United States at the cession of sovereignty over Hong Kong. She and the British contingents boycotted the swearing-in ceremony of the Chinese-appointed Hong Kong Legislative Council, which renamed the elected one. She expressed her support for national security exceptions to the Kyoto Protocol in October 1997, saying that NATO operations should not be limited by limits on greenhouse gas emissions, and that other NATO members should follow the exemptions at the Third Conference of the Parties in Kyoto, Japan.

Prudence Bushnell, the United States ambassador to Kenya, has consistently requested more guards at the Nairobi Embassy, including in a letter sent to Albright in April 1998. Bushnell was dismissed. Albright later told her that it hadn't been shown to her when she spoke to Albright about the letter. Richard Clarke of Against All Enemies chronicles an exchange with Albright several months after the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed in August 1998. "What do you think will happen if you lose another embassy?" says the narrator. Clarke asked. "You will go back to Congress in Congress," says the Speaker. Albright shot back, "I didn't lose these two embassies first of all." "I inherited them in the shape they were."

Albright argued that the "three Ds" of NATO are "no diminution, no discrimination, and no duplication, so I'm not sure we need any of those three "Ds" to happen."

Albright participated in a town hall style meeting at St. John Arena in Columbus, where she, William Cohen, and Sandy Berger tried to press the case for military action in Iraq in February 1998. The audience was agitative, repeatedly drowning out the discussion with boos and anti-war chants. The outraged, according to James Rubin, who said that the audience was in favour of a war policy. Both Bill Clinton and Albright maintained that an attack on Saddam Hussein would only be stopped if Hussein reversed his decision to suspend weapons inspections later this year.

"If we have to use force, it's because we are Americans; we are the indispensable world." "We stand proud, and we see further than other nations" in the future."

During a official state visit to North Korea in 2000, Albright became one of the first Western diplomats to meet Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader, when he visited the country in 2000.

Albright received a farewell call from Kofi Annan on January 8, 2001, on the last days of the Clinton administration, a State will press Iraq to destroy all its mass destruction weapons as a condition of lifting economic sanctions.

Albright was named after the United States Constitution. Senator John Heinz III received the Grandest Public Service Award by an Elected or Appointed Official, an honor given out annually by the Jefferson Awards Foundation in 2001.

Following Albright's time as State Minister of State, Czech President Václav Havel spoke openly about the possibility of Albright replacing him. Albright was said to have been flattered, but she denied ever seriously considering the possibility of running for office in her country of origin.

In 2001, Albright was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Albright founded the Albright Group, an international strategy consulting firm headquartered in Washington, D.C., that later became the Albright Stonebridge Group. Albright Capital Management, a company affiliated with the firm, was founded in 2005 to engage in private fund management related to emerging markets.

In 2003, Albright accepted a seat on the board of directors of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). In 2005, she declined to run for re-election to the board following the Richard Grasso compensation case, in which Grasso, the chairman of the NYSE board of directors, was awarded $187.5 million in compensation but no oversight was provided by the board, on which Albright sat. During the tenure of John S. Reed, Albright as chairwoman of the NYSE board's nominating and governance committee, the board's nominating committee chairwoman served as chairwoman. Albright resigned shortly after the appointment of the permanent chairman of the NYSE board in 2005. Albright opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, according to PolitiFact, although she said she would support the President after the United States was pledged to the conflict.

Albright served on the board of directors for the Council on Foreign Relations and on the International Advisory Committee of the Brookings Doha Center. Albright, as president of the Truman Scholarship Foundation and as chairperson of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs as of 2016. She served as the co-chair of the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, as well as the chairwoman of the Council of Women's Ministerial Initiative from 2007 to 2007, when she was succeeded by Margot Wallström.

On October 25, 2005, an Albright guest appeared on the television drama Gilmore Girls as herself. In the eighth episode of the seventh season, she made a guest appearance on Parks and Recreation.

Albright and William Cohen announced on November 13, 2007 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the American Academy of Diplomacy, and the United States Institute for Peace announced that they would co-chair a new Genocide Prevention Task Force. Both Albright and Cohen had opposed a Congressional resolution opposing an Armenian genocide, and Harut Sassounian and the Armenian National Committee of America condemned their appointment.

In her 2008 presidential campaign, Albright endorsed and praised Hillary Clinton. Albright, a close friend of Clinton, served as an informal advisor on foreign policy issues. President-elect Barack Obama nominated then-Senator Clinton for Albright's former Secretary of State post on December 1, 2008.

Albright opened an exhibition of her personal jewelry collection at the Museum of Art and Design in New York City in September 2009, which ran until January 2010. Albright's Jewel Box, a Diplomat's Jewel Box, released the book Read My Pins: Stories from a Diplomat's Jewel Box about her pins in 2009.

"How long can you blame the previous administration for all of your problems?" Albright was asked at an Obama campaign function in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, in August 2012. "Forever," she replied, to which she replied, "Forever." Albright appeared in a video on the official Twitter feed for the Democratic Party in October 2012, responding to then-GOP candidate Mitt Romney's argument that Russia was the "number-one geopolitical adversare" of the United States, despite his contention that the Russians were the "number-one geopolitical adversare" of the United States. Romney's words, according to Albright, was proof that he had "no idea what was really going on in the 21st century [and] that [and] is not up to date, which is a particularly risky part [of his candidacy]"" "and] that is a very risky part [of his candidacy]

Donald Trump was dubbed the most "un-American, anti-democratic king" in the United States, according to Albright. She also chastised the Trump administration for dragging out some diplomatic positions as a sign of "disdain for diplomacy."

Albright served as chair of Albright Stonebridge Group, a consultancy company, and chair of the Hague Institute for Global Justice, which was established in 2011 in The Hague. She also served as an Honorary Chair for the World Justice Project (WJP). The WJP is leading a multinational, multidisciplinary campaign to improve the rule of law for the creation of communities of opportunity and equity.

Albright, a co-investor with Jacob Rothschild, the fourth Baron Rothschild, and George Soros in a $350 million investment vehicle that promises to buy or build thousands of cellphone towers in Africa.

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