Blackburn Institute

Dr. Condoleezza Rice

US Secretary of State

2005 Frank A. Nix Lecturer

Dr. Rice became Secretary of State on Jan. 26, 2005, after serving as U.S. national security advisor since 2001. An Alabama native, she is an internationally recognized political science scholar and an award-winning educator.

As a professor of political science, Secretary Rice has been on the Stanford University faculty since 1981. During the period of German reunification and the final days of the Soviet Union, she served in the first Bush administration as senior director of Soviet and East European Affairs in the National Security Council and as 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. She has served on the boards of more than a dozen corporations and foundations, and in 1999 concluded a six-year tenure as Stanford University’s provost.

Born in 1954 in Birmingham, Secretary Rice earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Denver, her master’s from the University of Notre Dame, and her Ph.D. from the University of Denver. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been awarded honorary doctorates from UA, Morehouse College, the University of Notre Dame, the National Defense University and Michigan State University, among others.