Hoover Senior Fellow Condoleezza Rice confirmed as U.S. Secretary of State

Condoleezza Rice, the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, was confirmed as U.S. Secretary of State on January 26.

She is on leave from the Hoover Institution. In December 2000, she was appointed by President George W. Bush to be Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.

Rice served as a Hoover senior fellow from 1991 until 1993, when she was appointed provost of Stanford University. She held the position of provost for six years, during which time she served as the chief academic and budget officer of the university, before stepping down on July 1, 1999.

Rice first came to Stanford in 1981 as a fellow in the arms control and disarmament program. She is a tenured professor in the university's political science department and was a Hoover Institution national fellow from 1985 until 1986.

Following her initial Hoover Institution affiliation, Rice went to Washington, D.C. to work on nuclear strategic planning at the Joint Chiefs of Staff as part of a Council on Foreign Relations fellowship. She came back to Stanford when the fellowship ended.

Rice returned to Washington in 1989 when she was director of Soviet and East European affairs with the National Security Council. She also was appointed special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for Soviet affairs at the National Security Council under President George Bush. In those roles, she helped bring democratic reforms to Poland, and played a vital role in crafting many of the Bush administration's policies with the former Soviet Union.

Rice's professional activities at Stanford have not been limited to the university. She cofounded the Center for a New Generation, an after-school academy in East Palo Alto, California, and was a corporate board member for Chevron, the Hewlett Foundation, and Charles Schwab.

She has written numerous articles and several books on international relations and foreign affairs, including Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft, with Philip Zelikow (Harvard University Press, 1995).

Rice enrolled at the University of Denver at the age of 15, graduating at 19 with a bachelor's degree in political science (cum laude). She earned a master's degree at the University of Notre Dame and a doctorate degree from the University of Denver's Graduate School of International Studies. Both of her advanced degrees are also in political science.